dogtrax

I am from paper, from scribbled lines, from stories told in frozen time, from pencil marks and scattered poems, from notes to self, inside small glass homes, from wagging tails and hooks and pins, from laughter where our lives have been; I am from the memory we share as gift, and on the darkest days, where the light still lifts us into the embrace of love

for #OpenWrite

Day 22

My heart to the recurrence of the springs — Robinson Jeffers, Wonder And Joy https://poets.org/poem/wonder-and-joy

My heart to the subtle breeze of the wind My pulse to the rolling music of the rivers My love to expanse of the infinite forests My joy to this intricate world

for Advent Of Joy

It's all light from here - incremental solitude standing beside stones

for Algot

In A Family Of Artists

She's parsing pieces of old magazine pages into odd collage (for my wife)

An eye for detail, and cinematic focus; he threads each story (for my eldest son)

Switching to vinyl, the Brooklyn club DJ spins his grandfather's jazz (for my middle son)

Beats and loops and rhymes - broken signatures of time - he builds songs, slowly (for my youngest son)

for #OpenWrite

Day 21

To where it bent in the undergrowth — Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken

Such a path, overgrown in parts, and then slightly abandoned, active only by animals wandering the world by night

for Advent Of Joy

Moose became the moniker Murph taunted me with - me, always the bigger one - but eventually I got even on our hard-scrabble sand lot football field, tackling him a bit harder than I should have - I could have used more restraint - and yet there we are, stuck in the photograph, the two of us kids, laughing with our bodies crooked, years of friendship and music still ahead of us

for #OpenWrite

Day 20

My dust will find a voice — Sara Teasedale, The Answer https://poets.org/poem/answer

With whispers, my words will tumble and shift: an hourglass turned upside down, adrift

for Advent of Joy

Day 19

There's a lilt in the music that vibrates and thrills — Georgia Douglas Johnson, Joy https://discoverpoetry.com/poems/georgia-douglas-johnson/joy/

I'm listening for the bends, the turns, the way the song wends its way through familiar melody, and still, we're singing with bells, ringing, we're singing so loud, our voices are lost in the echo of the night

for Advent Of Joy

my father believed in gardens delighting at burying each thing in its potential for growth — Kaveh Akbar, What Seems Like Joy https://poets.org/poem/what-seems-joy

All we ever planted were tomatoes and maybe some peppers along the edge of the cement in our apartment block right there where the sun touched every day and my father would wonder where the tomatoes had gone and I would shrug in silent bafflement while wiping the seeds and remains off my lips

Day 18 my father believed in gardens delighting at burying each thing in its potential for growth — Kaveh Akbar, What Seems Like Joy https://poets.org/poem/what-seems-joy

All we ever planted were tomatoes and maybe some peppers along the edge of the cement in our apartment block right there where the sun touched every day and my father would wonder where the tomatoes had gone and I would shrug in silent bafflement while wiping the seeds and remains off my lips

for Advent Of Joy