What’s Your Unpretentious Best?

What’s Your Unpretentious Best?

            1.   Where do you come from? That’s the central question

                  posed by the Tao Te Ching.

            2.   From ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust, where are you in 

                  between?

            3.   I read once that a famous Hollywood director instructed

                  his dry cleaner to return his suits clean and rumpled.

            4.   Was that a contrivance? Yes, I suppose, but I sure like

                  the message.

            5.   Care to wait till we’re on our death-beds to ask if we’ve

                  been real to people closest to us, with imploring eyes,

                  not knowing the answer?

            6.   Proud of where you are in life? That’s OK, if you’ll take

                  time to remember your close calls. They might have gone

                  the other way.

            7.   Just be grateful at all times. That will deliver you.

Hat

She donned that

old rumpled straw hat,

the one with the

broad brim and faded

wide brown ribbon.

Here she was at

her unpretentious best,

her climbing warmth

spread over me and our

partners—a mother-friend

and young married son

sauntering the beach

on an early

Sunday afternoon—

a convenience of

caring company, a

lesson in simplicity,

an ease seldom matched.

We stop, they want

a picture, done,

and we move on.

She sends us a print

from Chicago, now

sitting on our dresser

for six years.

Love that memory.

Love that hat.

© 2012 Allan Cox, Allan Cox & Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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