Epistle. To: Berlin Film Actress

   The nurse took me out walking on some old woods trail. Did I need anything more? A path that snaked up like a lazy nude across the mountain and practically was this hillside environment of dull packed gravel flats with poison ivy and wildflowers on the side that rose to the sky top and ran like waves upward behind her birthplace farm in the midst of bird song and quiet falling streams. She held my arm on the walk. That made me feel spontaneous. Who does not want a touch? Something that crosses the warm blood like a stem and makes sparks? Notes played in my head. The rest of the body did the navigation. If I have a life to desire then I desire to walk properly again in that life. Not too much to ask now is it?  And in that life I want to double clutch all the prospects - and so in the telling - having the nurse upon my arm - as though to this were enough to say let everything else be mimicked and foretold but I have a wish in the afternoon with a scare of thunderstorms I might die for.
   Funny isn't it she said.
   What I wondered... even though I did not care what... I was walking up the side of a mountain and suddenly there was - like it existed - a secret way doing things - like somehow you suddenly knew how to tie a knot - on something pesky - but that does't really cover it...
   About things having a mind of their own she answered.
   They say motion reduces swelling I said.
   That's just silly optimism she said. It goes along with having a belief in potential.
   Isn't there a tornado watch today you wondered?
   No she said. That's what you read in the papers.
   Never been a tornado here? On the top of this mountain?
   No she said. And what would you do with that anyway? What would you do with all that openness?
   She had me there. Probably I'd do the same old things as before. Doing the same old things feels like home. And that almost makes you feel in love. That secret way of doing things like I said. The power of something other where can you hide while you think about it. In the head. Floating effortless and bargained with Damocles. An award winning second place head. I guess the question of openness and what to do with it make me want reservations I know I won't keep and not the methods for dealing with it properly.
   What does that mean she said?
   I didn't really know I said. But what I did know was how it felt. And that was like drinking cherry wine in a song on Cypress Avenue. Life's a feeling. No escaping that. You need to tire yourself out each day I said.
   Want to see the space ship she asked?

to bring neglected places and to find them

   Labor day.
   The conventional end of summer... tired garden flowers... ripe tomatoes... full cycle witness... each year comes back like reminders in days of small degrees of your own thinking to set things proper... you might flee.... you rally the marker... whatever case you make what I'm thinking is to celebrate millions... workers... have hope for more equitable standards of living for those coming after... and when all's said and done maybe then we've done more... more decent to have and to share the bounty of time ... more than just having a day and maybe setting ourselves up for a joke...
   Ah... the domestic self in a brutal economic world ... just as simply the cock-sure self in a funny throwaway world... either way when August goes into a calendar flip there's a chance to have proportion in your life.
    Okay - apart from having a couple of beers and watching the bike races each year downtown - not that it's a sacred tattoo of being - but it is a viewpoint - each labor day I feel lucky.      
   Hooked on it really.
   Consistent.
   States or wonder beautiful as evening clouds that describe the sky above.
   Fretful as a scrawl on a building's facade suggesting go away and be damned.
   Never enough really.
   Not DNA.
   Nor framework.  
   If I don't find out well that's enough for starters again...