like little bells...

i laughed out loud at me and then came my cousin's laughter a sound that since we were kids reminds me of elflight and glistens my heart like little bells. i dont have words to describe that feeling, why i even said what i said, we were walking around Canton Square the light of the night was orange from the clock glow and the neon signed resteraunt glare and all the mist from the crazy summer thunderstorm made for a haze and proved first harvest in-between the worlds magic literally was on the air. we were supposed to go see the O's in the allyoucaneat section we were stoked but then it was so wet and hot and eery out so no. we drove around the city in the rain and laughed and ate then got to walking and talking and laughing some more and it'd been a long, long time since we'd hung cuzin Ry and i and it was gold, and good, and so pure...

10 years is what I said followed by some self-deprecating remark and as always it was the self-judging that made us laugh so hard but it's not true i realized later, it's not 10 but 11 years since i've been on the shore. which is the same thing that i catch myself doing, saying i'm 31 when really i'm 32. 32!!! and how that feels not only to miss a year and then to puzzle for a sec and be like o yeah wait, that's not true, but to be an age that inside your head you have an idea about while at once living the fact that that idea isn't really exactly true. and it makes me think of martha, beautiful glamourous melancholy martha with the stories and the wistfulness that would make my heart ache when we would sit together back of the bead store nye beach, oregon, and bead and thread and talk and love. and the mirror she would use to look at the lipstick she wore and how much she still, at 60, loved pink floyd. and it made me also think

of being 19 and going to the community college my baggy shorts and hotgrl shirt and talking to the lady and saying a social worker, that's what i'm going to be. and realizing suddenly, again and again, suddenly each time, that that used to be my dream. and that that is it, that is what i now am....and how good, and hard, that's been....

and thank god for back porch of ocean pines and talking this morning with uncle tim and aunt mary the porch as always still enough, like a dream. and telling them for the first time of all those years ago when i a first year teacher with the beauracrats and how i got so screwed. and how that hurt but it was part of the job and so i learned...and now this year and how much i've learned from kim and also from my dad, but hearing the importance of what uncle tim said managers do it the right way while leaders do what's right. and it's a hard thing to learn, how to be, to really be, and at the end of the day to be at peace with yourself anyhow cuz you are you no matter what and that's what counts and too, where can you grow and where do you just rest, and back off, and accept and learn to love? and this is life yes and wow, how far i've come. and at all i've done and where i've been....and who i am.

and the city she is beckoning. four straight weeks i've run to her to feel the street at one with my flow and she is yearning and swift and i am yearning to go. and godalmighty first harvest is coming first harvest is almost here, it is the greatest, truest, fullest swell of peace i've felt all year... it started when i woke up wednesday sweetness in me a smile on my face cozy and content in bed just me....and the fabulous rustle non-stop in the trees. the whole earth alive with the buzz just like when taurus moon is above i recognized that movement come on deep inside of me: first harvest is here i thought, first harvest or lunar llamas is already here. and sure enough the moon had moved from waning to half-on/half-off and so with that i knew it was true and exalted in what one cant pretend but can only just kow and then could feel the tugging, the great turning of the wheel of the year. of course there was an ear of corn out front in the street when i went outside to take the recycling, go figure. and that night later, a black cat waited, then crossed directly in front of ryan and me. when i told him wasn't it great he got to expereince my little pagan walking dreams with me he said oh yea just great cuz then pannomined a gun to his head then quik with his other hand a splatter of explosion coming out his ear then we laughed again the tinkling bell kind cuz he's a poet and got the inner song like me and moves to the same ol tide....

and that's just it, all that ends begins again and the beginnings are just endings, in disguise.

so it goes, same ol song, silence and crashing, chaos and laughing, all life, sweetness and nothing, all life long....blessed, precious precious song