Several months ago Kathleen and I visited a friend in her Oakland hills home which was inhabited with dramatic artwork and plunges  of view to the city and bay.  One wall sported a large piece of junk metal hung against an expanse of white wall, triggering for me thoughts of how the past hauls up in images, fixed relics remembered starkly, inflection points in our lives which define us as we are now.  Perhaps for some it is different and they remember all as though replaying old movies but who has the time for that?

But when we do look at the past how do we see it? I personally have long held that the past is not a place of regret, it may contain remembered joy, but certainly it is also full of answers when we choose the gestalt that exists between the foreground of life and the past which shaped us; within those contrasts lies nothing but beauty.

Did You Turn To Look For Mary Jane?

7251 Albert Street has big white walls,

blankness immense until you turn,

stunned by that torn, corroded iron sheet mounted,

the trophy of urban hunts,

victory pinned to the walls forcing seeing,

so you turn again,

there is a crushed-paper-bag-faced woman framed nearby,

you never looked at her on the street either,

your vision stuck on the unwritten,

confusing youth with beauty,

strange how you love time’s mark on mountains,

faces of eroded rock holding your gaze while

missing messages written on those faces around you,

why don’t you hunt closely, in the mirror,

and reread the novel there,

maybe you will enjoy it more, this time,

there is so much you missed while seeking in the blank spaces between,

surely there is time for reflection,

longing again for when the wind and rain cut at you,

your pocked memories things of beauty --

it makes old men look in school yearbooks,

searching for what they coveted when the world was new,

but finding flat, smooth walls they turn away,

now knowing the beauty of the worn around them,

Shakespeare in every fold of skin.