Your Job

your job
is not to find yourself
between couch cushions
like a lost quarter

your job
is not to find yourself
in the peaked mountains
with spectacular views

your job
is not to find yourself
at your office, standing tall
on the rung you were awarded

your job
is to stop looking
and let yourself be lost

your job is to muck around
in all that stuff you have
all of it

and from the muck
make a vessel that stands up
adding the pieces
all the pieces
even the ones you think are trash
to a space front and center

the garbage
the broken pieces
the ones that don’t match

all of it
you have to use
all of it

and one day you’ll stand back
and look
and tears will come to your eyes
never having seen
anything
like it before.

Steps

I can feel the ice under my feet as I make my daily walk down Comm. Ave. I didn’t really expect this weather, just expecting a little colder air as the days wore into December. But now my feet hit hard brick and stretches of thinly crusted snow. The slippery wet leaves seem to be gone, which is rather a blessing. There are always those last few weeks of fall when the piles of leaves become dampened down by late rain, and you simply can’t trust your footing. I prefer the ice, even if the soles of my shoes lose all their softness.

I miss the smell of summer, it is so much more complex. The winter air is bracing, but it is just that; clear and cold. It lacks the subtlety of infinite life, of plants, dogs, and people. It even lacks the sounds of warm weather, the conversations, the open patios, the cars cruising by with radios hopping. In winter, I can barely sense the trees, but I know they are bare, as bare as the earth and the sky. As bare as the car windows rolled up tight. As hidden away as the passers by with their scarves wrapping half their faces. You can hear all that life pulled in tight. The winter air quickens my step, makes me feel sharp and awake, but it separates me from the world. I am on my own now to navigate the way, single steps taken on cold brick.

December 5, 2005