Poems from Preschool World

Posted on January 10, 2008 by randomyriad

The Dream Artist as a Preschool Teacher

There is a place

Where a line of tall eucalyptus trees

Stand in twilight.

A path runs along beside them.

Somewhere near is a park with a wooden game

Where you put a golf ball through

A maze of baffle walls and dowels.

There are triggers which:

Set other balls in motion

Change the position of obstacles

Make sounds occur.

Today I found six ball bearings and

Thought of how they would be perfect

for the balls in a small model

of the dream apparatus.

I could use some springs

And other parts

From the typewriter

We are dismantling

In my preschool class.

 

 

The Hard Sciences

Is it warm or cold?

Does it smell of the earth or taste sharp like electricity?

Will it have an engine or be pushed

By legs or pulled

Down a hill

By gravity?

Could you launch it into a cloud or

Drop it from space to burn

Through the atmosphere?

Can you crawl inside it and dream?

“It’s a river in the ocean,” says the child

Posted in Dreamtime, poetry, Teaching and Learning, wonder world, working world | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Three Poems From My Natural Science Period

Posted on January 9, 2008 by randomyriad

Twenty Years Ago

In the heavy forest,

My skin bordered the sky,

Played with it,

Wings probing,

Noticing,

Eyes turned on themselves.

In between

I was unprepared,

Whirled from almost every year

Back to that object of finding gaze

And folded bare twigs

To fill the spaces.

Free Will vs Destiny

Lacy skeletons

Made of millions of glassy splinters

Porous bodies

Move water in through filtering holes

And out through a central cavity.

Loosely organized of microscopic entities,

If strained through a sieve

And poured in the same location

Will form the same body

Even though each tiny entity is

Capable of surviving on its own.

More than a Bag of Accumulating Tissues

This simple body is not burdened

But enclosed no further

Splits

With no shell

Rigid

Soft ballooning tubes

Move one mouthful of another

World gobbling

Simultaneously protruding

Side to side

A wide-eyed

Sliding

Dance!

Posted in Art in Nature, poetry, wonder world | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

One Good Simple Thing

Posted on January 6, 2008 by randomyriad

There are things in life.

Simple, easy things that take the hardness out of world for a moment.

Ghostly music seeping in from another room makes me stop.

She is singing again, and I cannot move,

I must stand and cup my mind around this whispering flame.

The slightest puff of air will chase it into the night

and leave the world colder for its loss.

Posted in developing relationships, music, paying attention, poetry | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

This Year Has Got to be Better. Right?

Posted on January 3, 2008 by randomyriad

I keep trying to write a post about last year and last week, but I am in a weirdly negative place right now. I was feeling pretty good about the last year until I really took a good look at it, and it was all way too hard. I somehow got through it without feeling completely exhausted and alienated. In fact I feel OK.

A visit with my parents didn’t helped my attitude any. They live in their own universe, and I am at a loss to explain it to anyone but my siblings who just smile and shake their heads and say, “yeah, I know.” My wife and children want nothing to do with my parents at all. It all leaves me feeling inept, sad, and frustrated. It’s not a good way to end a difficult year.

Mary is feeling optimistic about going into nursing, and my job is not sucking nearly so much this year though I am tired of the whole overworked underpaid thing. My children are showing definite signs of maturing through their ups and downs and challenges. They are growing out into the world and finding their paths, and I look forward to supporting them on their journeys. I am moving forward with my own plans though they are much more vague at this point. The new year is like an undiscovered landscape moving around me as I go. When I started last year I could not have thought of all the challenges and interesting things that happened, and this year will be the same. I will start with ideas about what is going to happen only to be surprised over and over again by what actually happens. So why do I even bother trying to figure it out? I’ll just be here on the path looking at all the scenery and doing what I do to be me and support those around me to find their ways into whatever year we have in store for us.

Posted in All part of the process, can't really complain but, change, developing relationships, Family, Questions and riddles, Teaching and Learning, the end is the beginning, thinking in words, working world | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Resolving Not To Resolve

Posted on January 1, 2008 by randomyriad

This year I am resolved not to make any resolutions. OK maybe one resolution: To take stock daily of the present situation and release the past to its proper place. I will continue to grope through my life making changes as I see the need. Each day will be my new year. That way I can take advantage of every minute of the life that I am living now. A resolution to do anything focuses my attention on that thing when small, quiet miracles may go unnoticed. If it is so not a part of my life now that I have to put it there through such concentrated effort, maybe I am forcing something in where it doesn’t fit.
I am not saying my life is perfect, 0r that I will not be working hard at tasks that are important to me. But I have found that I sometimes work too hard trying to fit things in my life that ultimately bring nothing but frustration. I have begun to realize that although I make resolutions that doesn’t mean they are right for me or actually make any kind of sense in the long run.

My vision is limited and I often miss the clues that tell me I should be on a different path. I have spent too much time working toward goals that ultimately turn out to be dead ends that could easily have been avoided if I had been paying closer attention to what was happening in the present. I am sure I will still make mistakes, but maybe I will be able to avoid paths that lead ultimately to cul-de-sacs of self-deception that take years of struggle to escape. I am still paying for some of my past resolutions.

My resolution this year is not to resolve anything, but to take each moment as it comes and do what seems right in that moment. Maybe by improving each moment I can make everything move toward a place that is right for me.

I will make no lists or time lines. I will not make any affirmations or goals, not today. Maybe tomorrow something will occur to me that seems like a good way to go, but today I am traveling without a map. Maybe the treasure lies in a place that is just beyond the edge of the paper, or hidden in a crease. I will look at the landscape and ground and the sky and see what the world will tell me, and look to the people around me for directions as well. I am sure I will find my way to a place worth being.

Posted in paying attention, philosophy, Self-Experiments, the end is the beginning, thinking in words, whereever you go there you are | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments