still thrum through

muscle       eardrums

one hundred miles

on old Route 66

faded neon

peeling painted letters

stranded signs

standing tall above

decayed buildings

desiccated autos

washboard road meandering

over       under I 40

knitting new and old

on the pine tree in front

of my apartment balcony,

looks like an owl peering 

at me

When the tree was young

someone with a chainsaw

or handsaw must have

cut a branch to improve

growth or other some

such nonsense

But today an owl

appears to be resting

on a branch

peering at me

I haven’t posted for a long time.  But I began trying the three pages a day suggested in The Artist Way by Julie Cameron.  After several weeks of starting and stopping, I realized I really enjoyed doing the pages.  So I’ve been doing the pages,  sketching, and writing a poem a day.  The last two are what bring me to this particular pass of posting here again.  I’ve been enjoying the summer by sitting on my balcony sketching the pine tree in front of me: have several pages of different parts of the tree , yet never, before today, did I see that particular branch.  The poem per day has been a bit of word play/observance of nature.  The facts that I am building a habit of writing after 40-some years of indolence, have made a specific decision to change, have picked up sketching again (which I haven’t done even on a semiregular basis since the fourth grade), checked out this blog site, and THEN see the owl, which is not only the subject of the last post, but is often a symbol of change, is rather a fine example of synchronicity.  Enjoy and comment, if you will.

Owl Shadow

Standing on porch

Owl flew overhead

shadow missing me

by inches

Native lore

calls her

harbinger of death

Chicano stories

make her

familiar of witches

But when I turn

pages of my own

history she is

Wisdom

able to see

in all directions

In all

Owl is magical

and her shadow

nearly touched

me

Recognize that mask

you wear disguising

despair    defining

your life

the “fake it

til you make it”

smile shows

heart    courage

trying to break

 through

yet you are not

in your own story

Life a foreign

language never

to be learned

tongue can’t wrap

around syllable

sounds like music

forced unwillingly

into mouth.

Invisible

inside the mirror

essential self

not seen

 no recognition

no history behind

unknown face