the twenty-first of the month

It is the twenty-first of the month.

Not unlike what you could say

of any day, or any month.

A mark across what time makes plain,

unique by description,

supported by detail,

irrelevant as all the same.

Time is like the sweep

of a reptilian tail,

a long tale of us

as we would so describe,

approached with the some befuddlement.

How to render without the overburden

of self reference,

to toast a day

without inference to effects,

to experience the preeminent stampeding

flash flood of time

as a hydraulic engineer's

best immersive envisioning

and not as landowner or homesteader

or newscaster

or any other at-effect responder.

To be up front with the churning motions

of how this day is done

and not a religious clamor

for the whys of this day, this month.

Evaporative means is a form

of time's ever-laughter.

The miracle of this diminishment

as if moments were

droplets into disappearance.

How small in passage

until there were none.

Is time a test of focus

as concentration would administer?

It is the twenty-first of the month,

not unlike all others

but in the short term, apparently unique

yet lingering into irrelevance.

Now is how I see

the sameness in every day.

Now is who I am

for the seeing I do.

I stand somewhat in the awe of time.

I am an oral tradition

even if only as a reverie within.

I sense a countenance of spirit

that finds time as comforting

as wild animals

that would feel secured enough

to rest at my feet.

The tea ceremony is a peace aspect

of this presentation of time,

and yet a demystification of time

as if it had shadows

with all knowing motivations

for the oppression of means.

I do not see time any more

enrolling me into bad yoga postures.

Six p.m. does not have to be

the evening news.

Stoplights are not a uniform

appropriate for the dress code of time.

Holidays are not time's curbside wino,

cynically winking back.

There have come ways for touching

to take the pulse of time;

it is my body in an ocean of water,

my emotional component of aura

in a lingering group hug,

our shared face of permission

in response to cosmic disaster.

It is the twenty-first of the month.

It is a long corridor of time muted

but clearly defined by echoes.

It is the mundane whining weave

of everyday tasks and pleasures.

It is the massage of precision

lost on subjective versus indifference.

But for once, I have taken notes

to a half year's cycle,

Starting six months ago,

working towards the twenty-first of now.

This is really more than

noting street signage

and not anything like

studying suicide notes.

Just staring out into the vast

as gathered by experience's web.

Looking at fixation's stance

and how it is composed.

Seeing how composition sets itself

in the center of frame.

Observing the mechanics

that allows this frame

to be the honest hand.

Feeling for where a trust of being

then subsidizes this frame as real.

And what is this substance of trust

bonding these six months of sun

as the backdrop for who of me

that feeds as a witness to this freedom?

What is this

wellspring called trust made of

to be so resilient in these observations?

Working this time-filled collage

into mediums: of boredom, routines,

unrewardedness, the waitings,

unproductiveness,

bookend-to-bookend aloneness

in a life changing dialogue,

with major interior assimilations,

yet with little to share

from the flood of minuscule influences,

unweaving the rope,

undoing the knots

putting the fiber back

into the field of my being.

It is the twenty-first of the month.

Less is more.

A statement of being

has a chance at life.

Insight into the overwhelm

that doing can be to living,

that over-achieving can ever justify

an otherwise impoverished emotionality,

that over-watering any and all plants

is as if gushing were the nurturance,

that over-knowing everything

is as if there is a safety to be gained,

that over-exercising as if demonstration

were a form of concealment,

that over-loving is as a secret technique

for diversion away from pain,

that overcome with performance pressure

is to feel falsely rooted,

that over-gripping anything

is as a method of tension towards release,

that over-amping on conversation

is as if topic were the cause,

that over-entitled to an opinion

is as if self worth were a sell,

that over-guarded by a cynicism

is as if loss is kept as a score,

that over-impressed with experience

is as if reality were the reward,

that over-endowed with chances

is permission to seek the myth

of small perfections,

that we are bejeweled with choices

is as if accessories were needed

in an alley walk of sorrows,

that companionability is

a first five-minute intensive

in a cardboard cut outs sort of way,

that overly sensitive is

as if disappointment were

a style of acquisition,

while overly responsible is as if

a mandated need

to source some self importance,

that too quick to judgments is

as if the fastest gun in any situation wins.

All of these as monthly aspects

are time card reports

for now to become sheets

for origami made from my soul.

Once again,

it is the twenty-first of the month,

new shapes may come,

the folding continues anew,

producing out of timely observations

what is eventually, beautiful to view . . .