Posted in Creativity, Culture, Poetry, tagged creative writing, modern poetry, Poetry, Writing on 15 Mar 2024| Leave a Comment »
what if this
is heaven
where love rains down
on dreaming fields
to feed a soul’s desire
what if this
is hell
where acidic hates flood
shanty-clad plains
to burn flesh bone-deep
what if this
is both
where the ebb and flow
is merely a response
to our intention
k
Posted in Creativity, Culture, Poetry, tagged Creativity, K-drama, modern poetry, Poetry, quiet living, retirement on 22 Feb 2024| Leave a Comment »
the percussive exuberance
of K-drama dialogue
drifts down the darkened hall
a cryptic lullaby in
rollercoaster tones
leading me past
anxious abstraction
to plush midnight
Posted in Culture, Poetry, tagged achilles tendon, going unshod, injury, keeping active, walking barefoot, youth on 09 Nov 2023| 2 Comments »
at the last bell of the last day
we slammed closed our books
kicked off our school-year shoes
and soared on summer wings
up into our beloved hills
our youth’s true home
to live beneath brooding oaks
dance along moss-slick creeks
and walk barefoot through grass
made of spun gold
I grew up at the edge of a newly-minted suburb. Clean-lined bungalows sat contentedly behind manicured lawns, all surrounded by hills yet untouched, crisscrossed only by trails of deer, coyote, and vole. My friends and I, we lived up in those hills all summer (and much of the calendar’s remaining months), hiking the golden ridges, exploring hidden creeks and sudden glens, prospecting for pyrite, searching shell mounds for arrowheads, observing birds and wildlife, fashioning weapons from pampas fronds, and committing not a little bit of trespassing as we traversed private (and military) land.
Almost all of that time, we were barefoot. The soles of our feet, softened during the school year, toughened up quickly in June, protecting us from the live oaks’ thorny leaves, while our unshod toes gripped rocks either slick or jagged. Shoes, for us, were a nuisance; easily lost, frequently forgotten, they stole our sure-footedness and rarely survived the summer intact.
Going barefoot has been a hallmark of my life ever since. Around the house, puttering in the garden, walking beaches, summer winter spring autumn, I have almost always been barefoot (okay, I wore socks in winter).
And it looks like that’s going to have to change.
A couple of months ago, I injured my Achilles tendon. Nothing serious like a rupture, but badly enough that it often forces me to modify my gait or take stairs like an octogenarian.
My standard “walk it off” method of treatment did not work; if anything, it was made worse. Neither did resting it help (but how much can you actually rest your foot?). This past month I started employing a more aggressive course of treatment—heat, ice, massage, NSAIDs, compression, elevation, light exercise—which has helped, but there were still bad days when it ached and ached all the way up into my calf or kept me up at night. Finally, I discovered something that really seemed to help.
I put on a pair of shoes.
I work from home, and really only go out to run errands (as a 100% introvert, my social life is . . . sparse). Shoes were for going out in public, for heavy garden work, and for taking walks on paved surfaces.
Now, they’re for everything. Like going to the kitchen.
I am not happy about this.
Achilles tendon injuries like mine can take six months or more to improve, so I’m hoping that in time I’ll be able to return to the patterns of my barefoot youth. However, seeing as how I’m no longer a skinny, bendable adolescent but rather a thick-waisted and mostly sedentary senior citizen, no guarantees.
Still . . . fingers crossed.
k
Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged aging, Life, modern poetry, Poetry on 06 Nov 2023| Leave a Comment »
I am not the man
I used to be
not in any sense
I have been rebuilt
a half dozen times
sloughing off my past
for a new shell
Top to toe
each atom
each molecule
has been replaced
like parts under warranty
I raise my refurbished hand
to shade my eyes and
sunlight fires my flesh
with light aeons old
But the iron in my blood
the carbon in my bones
though new to me
predate this blazing sun
My ever renewing form
is a gift from dying stars
birthed of elements
roared into being
at the genesis
of the universe itself
Posted in Creativity, Poetry, Writing, tagged gratitude, love, modern poetry, partnership, Poetry, Relationships on 26 Oct 2023| Leave a Comment »
I have walked
From land to land and star to star
I have walked
Through lifetimes and histories unwritten
I have walked
Learning living loving leaving
One place one life one breathless moment
For the next
I have walked
Though not alone
For with each step each thought each dream-built notion
Through crepe-hung heartaches and clean-scented joys
To lead to follow or simply to be
There has been you
We
We have walked
Posted in Gardening, Poetry, Seattle, tagged autumn, fall color, fall colors, Garden, modern poetry, Poetry, seasons on 21 Sep 2023| 2 Comments »
sumac, feathered fronds waving, hear it first
autumn’s gentle rapping on the garden gate
put on parti-colored togs to greet the arrival
nearby maples eavesdrop on the reunion
catch half the meaning but all the sense of joy
don festive gloves on five-fingered leaves
sweetgum and dogwood wake with a start
having overslept in summer’s waning sun
leaves blushing with groggy embarrassment
wisteria, in denial, refuses to join the fun
and with tendril fingers in viny ears
will sing la-la-la until their guest departs
evergreen elders tower over the festivities
enjoying the youthful exuberance at their feet
preparing for storms they know will come
Posted in Creativity, Culture, tagged busy, busy schedule, full calendar, introvert, modern life on 07 Sep 2023| 4 Comments »
Bless me, Reader. It’s been three weeks since my last post.
Why? Because my calendar broke. Or more accurately, my introvert calendar broke.
What’s an introvert calendar? A calendar with nothing on it. Clean slate. Empty boxes with no fixed engagements. A fully functioning introvert calendar doesn’t mean I plan to do nothing. It means I have nothing planned. Big difference.
In this, my last year before retirement (T-minus 207 days and counting), there is much to do, and we’ve been doing it. Our calendar—especially during the past two months—has been chockablock with appointments, meetings, consultations, meet-n-greets, follow-ups, examinations, and procedures. We’ve seen doctors, dermatologists, radiologists, phlebotomists, dentists, and oral surgeons (yes, #32 strikes again). We’ve met face-to-face with financial advisors, Medicare consultants, contractors, plumbers, and suppliers. And, somehow, we also managed to squeeze in a birthday (hers), a 40th wedding anniversary (ours), and even a few social engagements.
For anyone it would be a serious course in Advanced Adulting, but for a serious introvert like me, it’s been all that whilst running a marathon, and to be perfectly frank, I simply haven’t had the spoons for anything creative. My brain has been filled with concerns, info, deadlines, questions, and fretfulness both reasonable and un-, so my gardening mode has been “maintenance,” my cooking has been pedestrian, my reading has been limited to emails and current events, and I’ve written little and woven even less.
However (thankfully) September’s schedule has a bit more white space than did July/August, and we’re both counting on October to remain featureless and calm as the doldrums, because come November, it’s a new round of activity, with another birthday (mine), the holiday season, some brief travel, and a bathroom renovation stuck in for good measure.
But here’s the thing I want to pass along: during this time of non-creative busy-ness, I chided myself for avoiding creative endeavors, or at least I did, until I actually looked back at the calendar (the broken calendar) and saw just how busy we’ve actually been. Creativity takes energy, and as an introvert, I need quiet to recharge my batteries, and I haven’t had any of that. All of my energy has gone into what was needed, leaving little (or none) for what was wanted.
So when you find that you haven’t gotten back to that quilting project or written that poem, when you find yourself exhausted at the end of the day with no energy for that new recipe or insufficient focus to get back to that book you’ve been reading, take a breath and admit two things: we all have only so much energy, and we have to prioritize demands on it.
Life is rarely constant; it much prefers cycles, rising and falling, waves and troughs. As long as we keep creativity on the To Do list, there will eventually be time for it.
Just keep it on the list.
k
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 