I walk over blacktop
under a black sky.
Fall wind pulls fallen leaves along,
they rattle and rustle in resistance.
The wind pulls me along,
I shuffle the soles of my shoes in resistance.
My soul wants to slow down
against this invisible pull of "progress."
Will I adjust to life without silence,
contemplation,
peace?
I'll lean into the current,
find stillness, rest before this night ends,
before the sunrise.

What if the mountains end?

As I drive beside the front ridge of the Rockies, a fear moves my insides.
What if they just run out and everything is flat again?
I peer toward the horizon to make sure they keep going,
going further than I will, assuring me there is always more ahead.
They offer angles and ridges and peaks, adventure,
change from the level West Texas plane of my past.

Underneath it all, you will find that meaning is hard to define, yet we wake up every morning, have our coffee, and walk into a world where the light is receeding and the dark ever encroaches. I walk alive among zombies and corpses. But life is not mine to give, I am only a vessel.

It's coat weather today, and all I have is a sweater. The class I teach in the morning went really well, so I'm in a pretty good mood. One of my students even wrote me a limerick.

In one of my classes, we are reading a book of poems, and I think it is helping me get back in touch with deeper emotions and wanting to communicate those. My haitus from songwriting might end soon, and (in the spare time that I don't have) I would really like to start expressing myself in poetry. Maybe you'll get lucky, and I'll even post some poetry on here. The only problem is I'm gonna have to embrace the emotional introspection I've been rejecting for pragmatism the past year or so. We'll see how it goes.