OREO

Two matching layers
Chocolate circles of concern
Contain a pure-white center
That urge a firm good turn

Reveal sweetened wisdom
Without broken promise crumb.

Outrageously Respect Each Other
The OREO rule of thumb.

Local Warming

  (Skiers’ Lament)  

Spring hath sprung itself upon us;

Flung its blooming promises into dull brown niches of lukewarm city-dirt,
Whilst it puts off ambitious foliation plans just long enough to coax
 Shepherds pie snow into barely holding its grip against the daffodiligence of the sun.          

Self Portrait

A Lot of nerve

And aggressive swagger

Not stagger mind you,  just verve

Vivacious and audacious

Gentle arrogant edge

With outrageous mental sway

I am here to swerve.

Portage Papparazzi

Steve floated to a position aligned with the horizon and tried to block the view of Portage sunset.  Since there was no shortage of sundown opportunities we posed his Tilley hat tilt and nose angle to make the photo more identifiable.  Stereo Theriault is truly in his element at Portage.

UPS FedX and USPS

Fore Street facing East during a crisp winter night in Portland.  This little city is beautiful and I don't recall any sirens which meant that there were no public emergencies during my stroll downtown.  We used this shot/thought for our annual Christmas card because we had used a stylized pinecone last year and wanted to identify more with the urban part of our lives in southern Maine.  The luminescent, transparent, color light spheres are festive and welcoming; the electric lighting poles are very convincing gaslight reproductions.  Peace was in the air this night and I pray that it spreads contagiously throughout the family to the neighborhood down and up 302 to Portland and to Bridgton on Prancer and Vixen to Alaska and Cuba and the caves of Afghanistan and back.  Its snowing tonight and the same street is jammed with skidding first-storm commuters compounded by last minute shopping crises.  We're home fireside and toasty with our coffee and plush Santa hat thanking UPS and FedX and USPS carriers for their skill and productivity and logistical mastery. Chestnuts are not roasting because we don't believe in chestnuts but there's some great homemade fruitcake calling. We wish you a very Merry Christmas if you celebrate Christmas and a very Merry Christmas if you don't.  The reality of Christmas is hard to escape if you breathe.   Peace.

The Snipe

The poke is a nudge without prejudice. It encourages attention without distraction and allows friendship without conversation.   Its like a postcard announcing that a letter is coming.  Or headlights flashing to say Hi but not warning of a speed trap.  Pokes can't warn and pokes can't opine.  But some have suggested that since the Poke Salad plant was used to paint the faces of Native American warriors that inkberry be used to mark the battle faces of the combatants in a Facebook Poke war.  I fear this movement due to the high risk of virtual bruising and I would rather negotiate a Poke Free demilitarized zone.  But lest I be branded as poke-averse I will most probably actuate the snipe, which is a focused invisible targeted action that will come out of nowhere and still retain the harmless humility of the POKE or even the POKE BACK.

Sixty

It presents with stealth and subtle warning. Mathematically, the accrual began a few years sooner but now the reckoning and the adjustments to the stigma of achieving, reaching, getting, and accumulating heartbeats begins in earnest.  Its just heartbeats and synapses, like a tachometer for the cardiovascular/nervous system. That is important because the need to pump blood and think thoughts is the real value measured by the number 60.

I am now in the business of downsizing the number of heartbeats because there are a finite number before my warranty runs out.  Someone once lamented to me that jogging causes the heart rate to rise, spending the lifetime allotment of beats prematurely.  It is known that the resting heart rate or pulse is slower in a runner and the heart pumps more blood per stroke, conserving strokes while fulfilling volume.  I want it below 60 bpm. So I run but I need sneakers every 500 miles and iPod updates more often than that. If it were not for age I would have no CV risk factors at all so I am working on raising HDL above sixty (60) so I can claim one less risk factor, namely a couple years.  The drug* I sell can do that;  In partnership with my good doctor, good diet and regular exercise, like running 3 miles and using stairs, I am the poster man for reverse cholesterol transport.  I am now dangerously close to the promotional brink here and it is a little tacky, I know, but I was the same way when I quit smoking and became a militant anti-puffer so indulge me its my birthday Live with it or die from it!

 "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now", says Bob Dylan and friends who are beyond 60 and still idling. Neil Young,  Mick Jagger & the premature deaths of Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin educated me.  Clapton experienced the death of a child and survived it by immersion into the Blues and I went with him without the tragedy but with compassion still.  Layla rings on my phone.

My much younger wife has sponsored my energy and cooked up a strategy to purge rocking chairs from our lives. Together on the porch we'll be seen staining it or shucking corn but not rocking in a chair. The hammock is quarantined by the fallen branch episode so my John Deere has become my lounge and the lawn my canvas.  And the kayaks keep us afloat.

Try to keep up.  The moral of this story is that my best gift is my good health and its value improves with age.


* Niaspan