Odds, Ends

                         The battery in my camera is dead and I need to charge it. The sun comes out for a minute and then when we go to the park, it starts raining on us. I'm almost done with my sweater but, once again, I'm racing against the end of the yarn. Oh when will I learn?

So here are some odds and ends of photos. No real story to tell just stuff I like.

  I'm working on pieces of plans and ideas, but nothing that is finished enough to tell. Maybe it never will be. I guess we'll see.

                                        I'm reading a very inspiring book, A Persistent Peace by John Dear. I saw him speak a month or two ago and he was very good. He has been arrested more than seventy five times in his peace witness and been to war zones all over the world. I'm not Catholic, but I am in awe of this strain of amazing service and witness that comes out of that faith. It does makes sense to me that it would be easier to do the work he does as a single person, it's hard to imagine getting arrested all the time if you have a family at home. Though I know people have done it, in the Civil Rights movement for example. Anyway, it's a great read.

End of Summer

End of Summer

Just an uncommon lull in the traffic,
so you hear some guy in an apron, sleeves rolled up,
with his brusque sweep brusque sweep of the sidewalk,
and the slap shut of a too thin rental van,
and I told him no a gust has snatched from a conversation
and brought to you, loud.
                                         It would be so different
if any of these were missing is the feeling
you always have on the first day of autumn,
no, the first day you think of autumn, when somehow

the sun singling out high windows,
a waiter settling a billow of white cloth
with glasses and silver, and the sparrows
shattering to nowhere are the Summer
waving that here is where is turns
and will no longer be walking with you,

traveller, who now leave all of this behind,
carrying only what it has made of you.
Already the crowds seem darker and more hurried
and the slang grows stranger and stranger,
and you do not understand what you love,
yet here, rounding a corner in mild sunset,
is the world again, wide-eyed as a child
holding up a toy even you can fix.
                                                         How light your step
down the narrowing avenue to the cross streets,
October, small November, barely legible December.

                                                                       -James Richardson