ONE: SOMETIMES THE SKY AND A WOLF LIKE A VISION

Sometimes the sky turns mauve and can have streaks of white. It was like that, and I am not certain whether it was an Indian summer or late springtime that had become unseasonably warm. Beside a ravine I walked, hidden from the sky save for the times when spaces opened between trees. A wolf ran past, grey, large, in the other direction and just in a bit from the path. He or she was travelling beside the water’s edge. It was only a second that I saw it for. What was it doing there? I didn’t know. And what did it mean? What does a wolf mean? I paused, and looked back. Unlike a scampering and mangy coyote I once saw, coy, almost apologizing for itself, the wolf was incredibly quick. It was like a vision but it was not a vision. Not unless you obscure boundaries and call everything a vision. I wanted to see it, call it ‘him,’ but he was gone. As I walked I could not discern his meaning.

TWO: INDIAN SUMMER INTERSECTIONS

Lately I have been worried about something. I found a place, a secret opening at the outskirts of a forest. Not one soul have I come across yet. I take the dogs there sometimes. About a half hour in, past old growth Oaks and quiet soft Pines and others, there is an intersection in the wood. You can go one of three ways. Four, if you count the option of doubling back to where you came from. I went to the right the first time, and found this place- absolutely wonderful. There are a few acres of grass where a person can think and roam, where canines can run, sniff, roll, sit, explore. But the second time is what got me worried. The second time I took the path straight ahead. My logic was that it would loop up with the wide open fields I had discovered the first time. So I went down a sheltered summit that a broken tree blocked. Then I went around some dense bushes. Still it seemed like a path. But it didn’t loop up. I definitely heard then an animal, much larger than a squirrel, startle and then run off. I went back and cut my losses. Once in the fields, I came across a sandy area with large paw prints and a dead bird. Now, I wonder, - is there a mountain lion or something else there? I am concerned.

THREE: BY SOUTH OCEAN BLVD

I was thinking that somewhere far off an ocean must roar. But not with the sounds of the tides alone. It must roar with colors, - the hues of the water sometimes green and sometimes blue but more often than not a mixture of the two. Things jostle and jockey for position, and it’s these two colors that definitely make for interesting swirls, textures, and so on. I am not so much for the color red. Too flashy. I would even go so far as to say it is more often than not a vulgar color. Things that are red include blood and sports cars and fast-food signs. No, green and blue are the colors for me. Maybe a light orange. Who knows? But the sea. The sea must be there, and it is sour grapes I guess that is part of why I think of it. Someone else is looking from a balcony or even better, - from the ground, at verdant palm leaves getting kissed by the salty breeze. Ah. And the ocean provides this gestalt that is full of prowess. That is not to mention all of the things in there to ponder. I can hardly even go on to think about the piers at dusk,-say, - one on each side of those palms, - to the north a few miles, and to the south. Which one would I go to? Which one would we go to? The one to the North has a lighthouse. That all has its own mystery. Good, yes. But I think the one to the South should be chosen. Why? I don’t know. There are abandoned catamarans we could sit and rest on. There is a long bungalow of a restaurant with lights that cast a certain glow that reach out to the sand at night. It must be there. It must still be there. In fact I know that it is.

FOUR: THE DREAM OF THE FALLEN CITIES

That was a long ago dream. There was another in the dream and it was a dream of a fallen city at night. There had been some problem, - well, problem to say the least. The city was in ashes and there were large machines, like malevolent robots of some sort, roaming about. The other person in the dream told me to get down when I tried to get up and look around. So odd, so impossibly odd and peculiar. I didn’t know what was what, and had no context, no point of reference. The other seemed to know, and was nice enough. I mean, the end of the world or civilization is not a time to worry about niceties but still, he seemed kind. There are many who are not and I have seen those two, in dreams and in waking reality. So, there was the feeling of orange. I am just reporting, you know? Why there was orange I don’t know. It felt real, not like a dream, but we need to use language. It always stayed with me. Jung calls them, I forget the tern, but defines a type of dream that stays always in memory for its impression, for its deep result. It was like that for sure. I wonder if I shall ever meet him. Maybe it is in a past life. Perhaps it is in a future life. Or, it could be an alternate time-line that was avoided. How is one to know now, though everything happens in the same timeless-time? That dream was long ago, and I suppose there were others, I know there were others.

FIVE: A RAVINE IS A WORLD

And they stopped here or there. Sometimes they had a bit of water. It didn’t take much for them to satisfy their thirst. As for satiation, they were not food motivated and only ate as much as they needed. God. What a creation. Where, I wondered sometimes, did they come from? Black and brown the one, and the other grey and white. They dash around. What will the first snowfall look like? Maybe it stays away so long so we can forget and then renew some faith. What would the places look like at night, with the moon as the only light to show the way? The cities sleep save for a few vehicles. Even the haughty and prideful ones have to rest. Then, the rabbit or the fox might go across those places. Once I saw a family of foxes come right up to the beginnings of the ravines where the suburban grates caught the rainwater, the effluent run-off from storms. They paused and looked at me, a friend, and the leader, perhaps the mother, did an energy reading. Fine. They looked around some. Then receded into the night again. I know the way. It’s where the trees used to be small and the garter snakes came out in the rain, disturbed. They bit that guy once, no? Where is he now? He was a good sort. So many things happened in and around there. Comic trading. The yellow police cars getting the teenagers to dump out their beer. But it was the storms that were the thing. I watched them from the window where the phantom had come in once for help. Black wrought iron gates, purple plum trees and a sour cherry tree. It’s all still there, it’s all still standing. But I don’t know what it is like there when a heavy storm announces itself to the environs. No, it’s all just memories. When the months where rain is allowed go away, the snow must blanket, nestle, and keep the grounds in a certain glow. Each branch and every feral shrub. All the small bridges and the old buildings up the way. Their rooftops watch the firmament let its story-poem of white come to marry everything. And the foxes…the foxes must see and hear the astute and heavy silence of all of that. Yes the foxes know all about the middle of wintry nights.

SIX: AUTUMNAL AND OTHER

Autumnal as she goes. And what would make you think of the autumnal hues and all the rest? Well, the months themselves. It’s too bright and hot in the days for a long time, but the season does arrive. Tardy, yes, but we will excuse such a small thing because of how much we love and adore you. Fall sacrosanct like the Eastertide or a true marriage. Thank God for the seasons, the one thinks, because we did not have enough gumption and creativity ourselves. She with her fallen leaves has brought us back to our soul. Now, we will think of old lakes and families, in simpler times, when there was some incredibly powerful presence- of nothing, of God, of possibility. And everything came out from there, continually. We were, as romantic as it may sound, in God, in the Source, in the timeless place out of which all things come. We did not have a word for the perennial philosophy. We did know too well our own religion so certainly knew nothing of the Vedas and so on. But this proves their truth. This proves God and eternity to all. How? Because we were in it before there was a name for it and even before any others spoke of it. But…the hardships to come. Hard people and places, circumstances, pitfalls, and darkness. Yet there is something they cannot take, because the autumn has come again and we are alive, witness, seeing, sensing. There are her trees strewn on the fields and the cold waters run themselves as if with a motor over the river tumbled stones. We can’t say it like George Elliot or some others, - but we can say it nevertheless- our two cents, and it is that the good cold comes in the night and world pushes itself onwards. Someone else will by aluminum boats, in coats, and feel the lake water splash up as the engine goes. Look back over there to the reds, yellows, and fading greens. It’s a time of good death. The flowing click clock of the stars. Blink on and off. The  branches curl just a bit, like when we bring our shoulders up just so and complain lightly and good heartedly that ‘its cold out.’ Its fine and right and the way of things. The land turns barren and takes away juicy fruit and verdant stories. It only offers itself as a small simple poem. People don’t care for much for such things, caught up in the hoopla of paths and the so-called glory of what is thought to be good and well. But…we love the lonesome October fields, - the five line poem saying the same thing. I am here. I am here. I am here. I am here even in slumber because my slumber is not actual death nor is there such a thing. I am here.

SEVEN: A DECADE IDEAL

That was an old place where there was a K-Mart and a burger joint. It wasn’t sketchy, dangerous, but was just right. The richies got a hold of it and put gates up, made boutiques. Once you see a boutique, well, more than one, that is the beginning of the end or at least a marker that a change in collar color is happening. God, how it went over the top. To show off is one thing, sure, - most everyone is guilty of it at one time or another…but now…it’s like a joke but you aren’t really supposed to laugh. Well, they won’t look at you, and sometimes the men wear scarves. Ain’t no scuffs on the shoes. If you sing a song of back in the day, you are alone with your song, but you gotta sing it anyhow. We went down there and the coolest movie theatre (which they promptly got rid of in the takeover), was down some escalators. It was like a world within a world. Mid-eighties. Summer or winter wouldn’t matter. It was all great. They used to have these little trees that grew in the middle of the place. Not anymore, - just plastic replicas and a lot of restaurant signs whose names can’t be pronounced. Not by me anyways. Then, though, - the plaid shirts and the popcorn. The atmosphere. In the spring before the rains everything looked dirty outside and it yet it was beautiful. The old running track and Van Morrison songs played somehow out of a speaker. The air-brakes on the bus would sound and it was an urban sunset mixed with wires, clouds. Civilization but not overly civilized, and the ancient setting star.

EIGHT: BIRDHOUSE AND OTHER

And it sees the storms and the sun both. Wooden, so mysterious to think of the little birds that come to visit, peak out, go away, alight again. How blue can the sky become? - Cloudless save for one single puff-stream, a happenstance in all the air. In the summers, under and about the birdhouse, all kind and manner of activity ensues. Bees, bugs, spiders. One time a snake came across there its movements slick and sure like the devil himself. But then it went. The day was too bright for the devil. Summer warmth, the star pulsing, maybe solar storms on there, and winter with its mounds of snow. Does ice form on the wood? Oh, there is no bird then but the brave winter bird and he isn’t talking. There is so much around those parts. Muddied stream, frozen in Februaries strong icy grip. Old farmer’s fence, plants growing atop, wrapping around and around and looking still here and there up to the sky. And it sits, the wooden thing, an artifact of care, - different, opposite than a bomb. The bird understands. You didn’t think it was in there peaking out but it was. They fly their blue and black and green selves ‘round the whole miles. And you know what? Sometimes below yellow butterflies dance about like bits of paper cut out and come to life in fields that sprawl under the watchful skies.

NINE: THE DAEMON OF THE FAIRGROUNDS

The crowds like a moving outside group of giant bugs. It’s hot but the human group is happy enough. It’s a place where the lights pop color and the carnival barkers, jovial and a bit cunning, call the bits of herd in so that they might be parted with paper or coin. A long time ago, other lives, - someone took me to a kiosk where they engraved my name and address on a metal or aluminum necklace. I had a double crown and numerous names but names are not reality. What a time, to walk through the world and the carnival at night and see the sights and hear the outside world along with the Holy Spirit buzzing in and about your ear! A motor sounds outside. Angels speak inside. The countries of the world are represented in little booths. Pearls, ornaments, talismans, necklaces, shawls, purses, mugs, lights, pins, buckets and tools and cards and hats. Whiiiirl goes the tilt-a-whirl outside and one laughs and another looks a bit troubled, a bit sick. When we go home our dreams might be a bit different. And don’t forget, the electric light queen walks those ways, through stalls and down aisles. She is adorned of earrings, denim, dark eyes, and the gifts of the spirit. But she is not for now, though she is for always. For now it’s good enough to see the roller coaster lights race through the dusk air and feel the good shake the heart and spirit down fairground way.

TEN: TRUCK- OF PRIEST AND FARMER

Truck. Abandoned. Rusted out. Such strong remnants though. The farmer used to stay and work while his kin went to listen to the priest give an exegesis on the gospels. No worries for anyone. The man of God had his work and the farmer had his. There was not a reason to think of the outer world, meaning the greater world such as cities and continents. Yes, cities maybe a passing thought and other continents and countries nothing but a dream. The man had work to do. Barely literate but holy in his vocation. Tending, mending, waiting sometimes. And the rains come to the fields. A gift. He knows the townsfolk, the old fences that run around the land, the texture of the loams and the rest. That was his truck, a true friend. But all things come to pass as is said. The priest knew and the farmer knew. Both long gone from the earth. Elsewhere. Farming the astral planes for souls and wheat both. And the truck sits there and we tell a little story because we are still here and that is one of the things people do.

ELEVEN: THE ACIM AND THE FLOWERS OF THE FIELDS

And the flowers of the fields are only there for a short time. Light but important poems, you could miss them. The Bible knows they do not strive and sweat. Oh, flowers and fields. Get down like an insect swirling in the summer heat and look up to the undersides and the sky with chunky cumulus and the crows that circle around the loam. I saw a hawk, smallish for a hawk, alight on a post. It went this way and that a bit and then found its footing. We are all like that but won’t find a sure footing. The Bible knows. It says that man has nowhere to rest his head. I think about that and the hawks and the flowers of the fields. About the ACIM and its smart blue cover and perfect pages. It felt not bad or good but so very weird, the ACIM. How many texts can one read? This one laughs at that one and the other esteems the other and so on and so on. Like people. And the houses wear shingles that make up a design on their hats and the rocks, - sugalite, howlite, amethyst, ametrine, malachite, rose quartz, jasper, angel stone, ruby, and hundreds of others are all out in the world. They live in pockets and on sills, around plants and in soil and mason jars and gardens. Sometimes they are around flowers. Maybe even the flowers of the fields. Sometimes the flowers of the fields show up as yellow and other times they are white. Purple happens also. Yes the flowers of the fields. It looks as if the storm has trampled them down with over-watering. It seems as if the early frost might get to them. Oh, there is a dog and a series of strong winds in the dawn. But the afternoon sun warms all, melts away the water, and subdues the animated animals. Then, for a few hours, for a little while longer, - the flowers of the fields reach lightly up and enjoy their being. The flowers of the fields.

TWELVE: THE INDUSTRIAL CORRIDOR AND THE GHOST WE CALL MEMORY

The industrial corridors. Actually the buildings are not tall. Mostly one story. Small sets of offices in front. In the old days means dogs were kept around, - and the requisite barbed wire. Some of those things remain. But it’s changed, - and there are cameras instead, and more polite signs with simple designations such as No Trespassing. Barrels stay there around the sides of some buildings, - oil, canvases, feral things verdant growing through cracks in the cement. I used to imagine that a witch came to the chemical ravine and did dances and cast spells, laughing as she would. But, there are mostly just rocks and gravel, - someone’s discarded chair, and a few old-timers still eat their lunch out there in the sun. They roll the shipping bay door up first and survey the scene. A city bird, a seagull. They are city birds also I suppose. Flying slowly and more jumping from little place to place. I mean, where is there really to go in the industrial corridors? Fences, pallets, old steel hubs. Power washers and a thousand old cars. Maybe there are ghosts there and maybe there are not. If not, it is certain that there is the ghost we call memory.

THIRTEEN: THE DEAD SLEEP WELL UNDER SUMMITS HIGH

High hills. So far away from everything. How could the spirit of the hill and cemetery network in an urban city? Ultimately the eternal and the timely, the vertical and horizontal lines and dimensions as it were, must mix and mingle, integrate and then live, bring down the light to the world. But not then. Not now. The angel sits frozen, - watching, pensive of spirit. How could it ride a bus, a money raising campaign, or the wave of ambition? No, the angel is kind, not ambitious. Don’t they see that the world is, well, worldly? This is where the gnosis is, - on the hill, with the angel, and the late summer dreams of the blue sky clouds migrating but slowly, slowly. A little road meanders there, if it could be called a road. Flowers, watering cans, trellis. Names mark the stones like Robinson, Miller, and Henderson. They walked and lived and put the cooking pot on the stove at seven o’clock, at twelve o’clock, at five o clock. Meal time is over now, - for them. They are the food for the soil and worms. The way of things. High hills and certain decay under the verdant clean summits. But it’s better than the decay of pride and ambition in the cities. High hills. So far away from everything.

FOURTEEN: THE RAIN WHEN IT TAKES THE WORLD OVER

Out there, the rain having arrived to break up the hotness. Out there, the same things, - the urban sprawl and the dim electrical lights watching empty walkways. Out there, not a marked difference really, between evening and day. For the storm, you know. Caffeinated, we watch it all and plan a documentary film. Maybe it will be called simply, Napkin Notes, because of our lack of paper and making due with what is around. The alliteration ain’t bad either. Melville- read Saint, Guru, or Leader,- and his sea are long dead. We cruise a spiritually vacuous set of years and displays. The grocery stores, the buildings curt and new and strong but devoid of any character or soul. The drops marry the window and many stay. Everybody is heads down- living safely, far too safely. A plant is out there, on walkways, springing up still in the rain and grey. That is hopeful. In the faraway fields the bushes get tossed pack and forth and a porcupine hides, - that is something. But still, - it is a difficult go. Not for the external struggles because there are hardly any, but for the search of a fabled, romantic, probably non-existent, full-blown enlightenment.

FIFTEEN: WE LIGHT WICKS AND REMEMBER THE ATLANTIC SEA

They made a place where a candle and a flame from wick came up. Then atop the cable spool painted hunter green they put the fruit and the bottle opener. The night opened and lauded their talk, - and they were faithful. Solipsism and things like that were far away, - it was time to pray in the head and through the communion of friends. Far and far and far in the distant chaparral a bat went and waited for a few seconds. Not really his place, - but he had to be there. It’s like that sometimes, no? But time, though it can take a long time, passes. Thoughts reeling back- to Cross-town, and the old grandfather looks amidst the aisles for something. Raspberry yards and the impossible and preternatural bright of the early summer sun. Pompano, - and the Atlantic waves, Tom, Jimmi, Annette, Ruth, Sean, even Natalie. The old gun ranges and the snake shot blue that was found in the lot. Smells, aluminum railings, piers racing out to meet the sea and cargo ships travelling across the horizon line of the earth. The Mana Loa, the miles and miles long flea markets or indoor malls,- paper boxes popping yellow and blue with the morning raindrops sitting on them,- round, full of molecules and perhaps universes. Thick sprawling vacant lots and the glow cast on palm leaves by the quietly stationed night lights- yellow, purple, blue. The pools- cement. The sea- whitecaps. The firmament- constellations knowing things. The eyes- connecting to everything. They made a place where a candle and a flame from a wick came up and as they talked they remembered at the same time about those things.

SIXTEEN: WHERE SILOS SIT UNDER THE CALM CUMULUS

Small abandoned silos up from the road. If you pull in a whole flock of birds spills out from being startled and rides the sky up and up and up. It happens so fast. Cumulus clouds above. The one lane highways go and go and go. Sometimes you see the pictures and flowers, right? - Where a soul died. I had a friend that was the victim of a drunkard and drugged one. Got hit head on. But I can't believe it. We sat on a swing and instead of putting on airs or judgements, creeds or views or any of it,- she was on the level. Unbelievable. There are not many that are like that. On the level. If blonde hair and brown eyes and true talk is found,- then such should be esteemed and honored. We joked and laughed easily on the swing, far north of the metropolis, like two that had known each other before. No, dead should not be the way. Providence should smile, but sometimes it doesn't really even show up. Dead. We all die but it would be nice to stay around a while. You wouldn’t know the incredible sadness to look at the sun shining then. Strange how the sun keeps it up, all the time, all the while, year after year. I guess it has to help the flowers to grow and somehow the streams to melt and flow. The silos look metal and white, - and make you think of a good design. Far behind are the thick forests and the large Oaks. They must look painted white-snow only in the winter. Or do the flakes fall off? There must be times when the wind really comes across the roads and the fields and there are not many trees in places, or structures, to block the white from sprawling and singing its song everywhere. Maybe it can crawl up the sides of silos and maybe it can even block out the sun. For sure, it can overtake the birds. But for now, the flock spills to the sky and in the beginning there is a ruffling, somehow rustic rambling as they beat their wings and bang their beaks and souls to the sun.

SEVENTEEN: THE DUSKTIME INTERSECTIONS THEN

The intersections then. Something in the electrical lights. Hopefully we will make it home, - to where there is safety. So many idiots about. But there is a beauty, benevolence, somehow, to it. It’s okay sometimes, and even good and well, - that the cement is by the lights and the cars jockey and play for position and the moon rises and the sun sets and all the rest. Long ashen days give way to textured and interesting night scenes. The fire hall sleeps a bit, - alert but rested. The ice rink and its zamboni- quiet- still- placid. It’s not known, but a river must collide with the water edges- that is what a river is, and the tree sways over and above. So long is its branch that it dips itself into the wet at times. Hedgehog, - owl, - critter. Normal, - esoteric, - nuisance. It’s all down somewhere from the intersections in near night and night.

EIGHTEEN: BEFORE WINTER STORM

Wide open. Nobody around. No central place, no nexus. The wind subsides and it’s like a movie about nature. The sky an interesting and blue tumbled canvas. Odd foreign seeming trees not seen or noticed before. Walk away and into the middle more. Now the wind comes. Dogs run and prance and play and fight but light-heartedly. Farmer’s fields and loam to the right. The CN train booming along down to the left. But far, you know. Even the gun range can be heard; - the reports come across, bellowing and then echoing all through. Tracks from deer, rabbit, and coyote. Each step, - then…to the woods. Thickets, glens, pines, - the feel and scent of winter. Day blinks off to night and then the night stretches out and the animals dream in dens. Constellations are there, and soon blocked for a storm comes. High snow. Wind. It will leave ice and frost, danger and even a four legged agile type might find itself slipping down a slope.

NINETEEN: STARTLED BY THE TREE

Startled by the stillness of the tree I stopped and stared. It was akin to being in a vortex and I wondered at the new agers and the ways and traditions of the old practitioners…were there vortexes, an ancient power-stone- something? Tree and tree and tree. Many, yes. Some solitary and refined, some wild and unencumbered, - bits of disease, bits of broken bark and decayed leaves. All small problems, because the main magisterial quality abounded still. I moved, but looked back, and even sometimes went back. Leaves. The sky through the leaves. At other times the sky obscured rightly by the foliage. It looks black in the dusk and light brown in the day. Wise through time, having attained to something timeless. The humidity and the rains are no comparison for watering cans and indoor light. Look. Look at the tree. The foot goes gently as possible upon the path, and I keep looking back. It’s decorated in itself somehow, - a spirit. Is that is what it is saying or is it a projection? The tree. Startled and happy, smiling, I walked on.

TWENTY: FIELDS AND INHABITANTS

Vast and sometimes flaxen from the sun. How many seasons does it receive? And the transitional parts?- where the spring flows into the summer the summer lays down to slumber allowing for autumn and the autumn becomes overtaken by a winter that holds fast and hard but eventually melts upon itself and disappears into spring. Field. Where the pre-storm wind ignites some willfully melancholic dream feeling right there in waking reality. Field. Where those crows caw and you say-Its okay- Caw crows- caw louder- because really, it is known in the marrow and blood even, that there is no such thing as death or decay. Field. When the cold northern rain announces itself and the dusk makes it colder yet. Field. The electric light queen is absent, - unlike in films or storybooks. But it’s the way of things, for some reason or for no reason. We walk on the best we can and smile some because we are here.