Pillows

Luggage. Baggage.

I see it all, from the overnight bag to the space age 4-wheelers you can wheel up right beside you. Some people look like they've got a LOT. Two old suitcases, one on wheels, and a box taped shut. And a cloth shopping bag. And purse. Going to Windsor in an hour or so. For a long time? Forever?

More than anything, I love the sight of a person traveling with a pillow. Tucked under the arm. In inclement weather it might be jammed in a garbage or department store bag. But it's nicest exposed, tucked under. Or better, embraced, in front, by the two free arms of a backpack-wearer.

It's an ordinary object with an extraordinary task. Cushioning and caressing the head, the container of awareness, ostensible commander of our bodies, keeper of dreams, repository of tears, of smiles, of twinkling eyes, hopes, ideas, good deeds. Mistakes, lies, key plays, brave phrases, vulnerabilities encased in bone. Memory, ancestry. Our existence & our remains.

Carrying a pillow through the streets and into the station and onto the train is not just about getting this object from A to B. It's an act of intimacy, an admission of humanity, an expression of solidarity. A reminder of all the things I've been carrying and how I lay me down.

May 13 'round 6

Like a giant followspot fired up
& trained on the prostrate actor

A bedside lamp suddenly lit
by the one charged with awakening

The sun itself pulls me from sleep in the cradle of the train.

After a split-second of indignant 'whaaa-?'

The most beautiful truth is realized: I have been roused by nothing less than the rising sun itself.

I can drift back into slumber, let it illuminate the eyelids

Imagine a bed of foraged things
& light falling across the mouth of the cave.

Coolness

I'm not cool

never have been.

Often tried.

Never really pulled it off

& if I ever did, would I know?

What would be left?

I must think it's important

or else why feel so bereft?

Pigeons & Sausage

The pigeons have destroyed the bun.

But they can't make any headway on the sausage, with its tough casing and its trademark curve. It rocks and leaps and spins around from sidewalk to gutter as they peck and peck and peck.

Sometimes as many as ten of the grubby grey birds are going at it, with agitated, muffled cooing in their throats. The sounds escalate to an untoward hooting. Necks are strained. Most of them give up and walk away. A couple of believers carry on a while. Then a mob forms again. Still, the dessicated, dirty sausage writhes, uncompromised.

They can all smell victory; a breakfast to rival the best corn anyone's ever cast before them. If pigeons had saliva (do they?) it would be dragging in globs from their bills. But they just can't tear the casing, taste the spices, can't catch a break.

If one of them gets a foot on it, holds it down, then everybody eats.

It becomes the stuff of pigeon lore, passed down through generations:

The wondrous spark in one bird's brain, a proud, firm stance, chest puffed out, knee bent, gaze fixed on the horizon, talon gripping the ragged meat, the whole family, cousins and cousins once removed, all feasting. The missing link.

When The Train Pulls Up

To the deserted station

In the dark

There are so few of us I recognize everyone

Like the guy standing RIGHT on the EDGE of the platform

Right on the yellow line!

He turns his back when the train comes

Pushing air ahead of it

And he takes the brunt of the gust

In all weather. I don't know why!

Most of the time I'm just worried he'll cough wrong and fall so I don't really look.

But today I just didn't think of it - what am I, his Dad? No.

I just stared at him

Had room to re-realize: we are immersed in fluid.

Standing in a sea of air

That goes in and out, sustains, inflates.

Our stories, conflicts, concerns, calculations, insults, embraces, all float around in it.

We are in a great container full of it.

We forget all the time.

Empty Stockings, or Just a Minute on The Night Before Christmas

In the morning, the stockings are always full of something, whether it's all we could scrape together, or just the tip of an iceberg of booty. Could be soap and socks and chocolate. A big navel orange lodged stubbornly in the toe. Could be coal. Dreaded coal! Or whatever. They're full.

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care. Empty stockings. No sooner do we picture the stockings hung than we're hit with the hopes that St. Nicholas soon will be there. In fact, their emptiness isn't even mentioned. We just figure they're empty. Why would anyone put up a full stocking? But come now. We have no time to think on this, because we are distracted by, prisoner to, totally wrapped up In Hopes that St. Nicholas Soon Will Be There. Dammit!

O, call it the excitement and anticipation of a Christmas Eve if you will, but - if you care - we've missed something. We've missed the exquisite emptiness of that foot-shaped, gaudy, felt or velvet or woolen ornament nailed up - or hung from shiny, mantle-saving, weighted custom brass hooks. Never meant to be worn, only to be filled.

Before something can be filled, it must be emptied. And we're full. Full of thoughts, desires, fears, memories, intentions, stories, worries, strategies, lists, shames, triumphs past, and losses to come. Full of wanting, needing, grasping, avoiding, conniving, wishing, praying, bargaining, using, reaching, spinning...you get it. We're full.

The stockings, hung by the chimney with care, are empty.

And somehow, in the dead of night, they're filled.

Legend has it that our actions through the year dictate the contents. Tradition holds that we get what we need, with a deluxe old-world twist: New mittens, warm socks. Soap. A tiny book of Oscar Wilde quotations. That Orange. The contemporary sensibility has room for some astonishing bauble, or electronic device. Now that's full.

And the stockings are emptied again.

They're laid in the box with the creche and the garland, the books and the lights, and they wait.

No, wait. They don't wait. They lie still.

They are emptied. Maybe they will again be filled.

Train yesterday/today

Yesterday morning, the traincar was all stillness, like a temple lumbering over the rails, like a body of water that has never known agitation.

Today, it is all motion, inside and out; a den of idiosyncrasy:

A man speaking awful fast about new fibre optic TV

A woman who tears the newspaper, long and luxuriously, over and over, as if everything is fascinating

A right snoring fellow, short enough to lay himself flat out on the seats, startling with his snorts

This lady loves her dentist, hates her hygenist

This guy's coughs are classic cigarette + chest cold & may only lift in May

And remarkably, I'm drifting along in peace over all of it, banana peel draped over my thigh, unopened yogurt in dangling hand, part of the fresco, nodding off myself

Letting the glorious machine run all the way downtown in its vivid completeness.

In the evening, two dudes sit facing one another, each with a hot, fragrant pail of poutine, and I feel like asking them:

Where were you guys this morning?