waiting for a reply

These birds of the feather flocking together -- are they patient while they wait for what they want?

Do they want? I ask my father after he emails this photo, taken from the frozen Missouri River.

My father speculates: Yes, they do want. They want a ride home.

Do they know what home feels like? I write back.

Photo by William O'Keefe

sans

Because she asked, I altered this photo for Rose Hunter, a poet who lives in Mexico every chance she gets. Beneath the surface is my photo from this blog's header. The horses come from her. Lately she's swapped photos for her words.

**

I learn that the man who signs my paychecks was once a little boy with a matchbook collection. He tells me this while showing me lost-until-now photos of his father from the 1920s. I ask, how does it make you feel to see these photos of your father for the first time? He says it made him remember his matchbook collection that blew away when the door to his family's storage trailer was left unlocked one winter years ago.

**

My cell phone rings - a friend calling  about his first night on the job managing a 24 hour call center, a job he had never wanted to accept. I'm braced to hear complaints about calming angry customers, but instead -- this: The lady from Ohio ordering a meat processor and three extra blades  at 2:35 a. m. gave birth to a baby while talking to him on the phone. He called 911 in her home town, stayed on the phone and reminded her to breathe. He got to hear the baby cry. It was a healthy baby boy.

**

A friend I've not seen for some weeks sends an email today. Did she want to talk, I query. Instead of replying she tells me about standing in a field of snow, shouting at the sky. The night was dark, the moon was gone. This is what it must feel like, she writes, to stand on the corner of 4th and Exposition  holding a cardboard sign: Anything Would Help.

handful of stones

A Handful of Stones invites us to participate this month in following a trail of small stones: polished moments of paying attention. Have a go at it, but don't force it. Everything is already there. Here. And showing up as missing.

***

Home-less  (hmls)

NOUN: (used with a pl. verb) People without homes considered as a group. Often used with the.

There, to the left -- a tiny Christmas

tree growing in the empty lot

across the street from Denny's.

Old snow drifted over. The flash

of blue parked downwind from the tree.

Someone's borrowed grocery cart

stuck in knee-deep crust.

through judith gap

Trust me when I tell you we slipped through the thinnest fog.There are no photos  to share here because the photos I took from the back seat of my ex-husband's car couldn't capture the magic of being the only witness in a stretch of fog. That happens sometimes -- a defying moment, shared while enroute to some place else. With someone else. For years to come, we will hear the word, fog, and remember who we shared that moment with. Often, it's not who we would choose. 

But still: wisp.

Say the word and the four of us who shared the same pre-dawn ride through Judith Gap, will pause for a moment to remember shared glances through rearview mirrors and headrests as we slipped beneath ground cover floating in thin waves four feet above the quiet earth. We'll remember how we held our breath and how that breath held us. 

over the river and through the woods

This is where we are headed for the holidays.

Last minute text from a favorite nephew: Don't forget your ice skates.

Wishing you many blessings and the opportunity to gather yourself anew.

photos, untaken

Turns out that waiting for the coal train to wander its way along the downtown tracks lasts as long as it would take to smoke two cigarettes. This I hadn't known, and I also didn't know about counterweights on the railroad crossing bars. You have to watch out for them when you are crossing the tracks on foot, after the train goes by.  Standing in zero-degree weather, waiting to cross from the south side to the north side, I listened to the slow-moving westbound coal train. Train wheels on a frozen track produce a continual ringing. Unlike church bells where you might hear the moment when the bells are struck, the train wheel ringing goes on and on. And on.

Stomping my feet to keep warm, I wondered outloud, in a Sherry-Being-An-Idiot moment, how many people had ever heard such ringing. The musical, cylical tones were new to me. The man who had informed me earlier that the end of the train wouldn't show up until he had lit his second cigarette, blew a ring of smoke towards the full moon above us. "The hobos," he replied.

When the last coal car slipped by, he offered to show me the best way to weave through the cross bars and piles of shoveled snow. We needed to hurry, he warned, because the eastbound rail was next.

"Are you after a tree, too?" he asked as we worked our way between the chain link fence and loading dock behind St Vincent de Paul's. I didn't know what to say. Really, I had only stopped by to take photos of the donated trees lining the front of the charity store.  

pompey

Solitary. Outside, watching in.

One of the neatest experiences I've had in the writing world happened when I was writing the poem, This Was Supposed to Be About Karl, But it Didn't End up That Way. It's just been published by a journal I admire, PANK. I hope you click over to read and listen. At the time, the poem didn't make entire sense to me -- I wrote it down as it appeared. Now, about a year later, it speaks for me. Mysteries aren't always meant to be solved before their time.

on the corner of 5th & wesson

I buy groceries at the same store I shopped when my toddlers fit in the grocery cart. The butcher knows to wrap my meat in 1/4 pound packages --the babies are adults now. Everyone knows everyone, even when they don't. There is a general sense of neighborness going on.

Sunday I stopped to buy  bananas and red potatoes. The clerk, the one with the crooked grin, was wearing an oversized Eagles NFL t-shirt. She chatted about how every employee in the store was cheering on the Eagles today because it was her favorite team. Eagle bling was everywhere. I swiped my debit card, she bagged my produce. Behind her, two other cashiers worked at their own registers. The dark-headed high-school clerk had just finished loading water bottles into a customer's cart. He grabbed a sheet of cardboard and a black marker. Scribble scribble scribble, then quickly  held it over his head so I could read it: We hate the Eagles! 

Behind him, the short and dumpy assistant manager, right wrist in a carpal-tunnel wrap, reached under his counter, producing a bright orange poster: Go Broncos! Eagles suck!  I grinned. My clerk grinned back and handed me my receipt.

armchairs and unfolded globes

Travel on a budget - check out the BluePrintReview project, a journey waiting for you to experience with the click of your mouse. The second edition of this blog carnival is being hosted by Nicolette Wong at her blog, Meditations in an Emergency.

alley shots

Our streets are rutted with solid ice. I can't think past the tracks.

When I get to this point -- where I have no appetite and have ceased to engage in my surroundings, I find fresh batteries for my camera, slip into sturdy hiking boots and head out to find a different view.