Get Hold of the Unsteady Life

Get Hold of the Unsteady Life

Grasses

Almost always

in my idle moments

when my mind

is free to all comers,

turns first to the fields

and their grasses.

It’s their various colors

and bending,

yes, the amber waves

of grain,

a lake of stems

and crowns

lowering in broad strides

before a soft and caring

wind.

I don’t know where

this comes from,

but it is an anchor,

a steadying,

if not locked

presence.

Peace always.

Peace.

To Ponder

            1.   Idle moments open one rhythmic way to a full-flavored

                  life.

            2.   A life may look steady from outside, but the effective

                  one, by necessity, is also one of modulation.

            3.   There are longs and shorts, waiting and leaping, highs

                  and lows—all in a well-purposed existence.

            4.   These variations—always, some of them unexpected—

                  must be brought into a state of flow.

            5.   For me, it’s the grasses—the imagining of them—that

                  often bring me back to the job before me—that of

                  modulation.

            6.   It’s a soft touch, usually the best way—to address

                  formidable challenges, for achieving sought virtue with a

                  warm heart.

            7.   What’s your modulator? Do you have one? It’s the better

                  part of wisdom. Find and claim it.

© 2013 Allan Cox, Allan Cox & Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Mayor Jimmy Walker, Deposed*

Mayor Jimmy Walker, Deposed*

Alley

Spring-through-fall

when Chicago’s weather

is moderate enough,

we sleep with our

window open a crack

or more.

Up on the third floor,

that window opens

to an alley that divides

our block-long residential street

from a block-long commercial street;

a neighborhood that includes

upscale shops, bars and restaurants.

Early Sunday mornings,

now and then,

after the 4am bars close,

our alley’s not so upscale.

We’ve heard violence,

but as yet—in 22 years—

no murder.

Charlie, my friend

since high school,

who lives down the street,

says, It’s city living;

it’s what it is.

That Charlie, he’s

got a way about him.

To Ponder

            1.   Sure enough, dense urban living is a choice. One could

                  live elsewhere.

            2.   Like all considered choices, this one entails tradeoffs;

                  what do you give up in order to have what you want?

            3.   Wide lawns lose out to curbside plots. Screened-in

                  porches ruled out for four-floor walkups and

                  ubiquitous hi-rises.

            4.   Foreign tourists blend their sounds on the streets with 

                  in-town meeting-goers bent on expense account

                  dinners and a hoot to boot.

            5.   Cultural advantages abound and take their place

                  alongside crime and vice, a mosaic light and dark.

            6.   Sirens, Oh the sirens on especially dark early Sunday

                  mornings, one on top of the other. Police mostly doing

                  their duty.

            7.   I get it, Charlie; it’s city living. It’s what it is. And yes,

                  we’ve got trees.

*    Mayor Jimmy Walker in 1932, musing at the rail of the Staten Island Ferry,
      looking back, on his way out of town: “Who’d Wanna be President of the
      United States When You Could Be Mayor of New York City?” 

© 2013 Allan Cox, Allan Cox & Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.
__________________________________________________________

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Give It a Chance

Give It a Chance

Accommodation

She is like a turtle:

wherever she is is home.

These are notes

to a passage in

Stephen Mitchell’s translation

of the Tao Te Ching.

Turtles are slow,

but they’re sojourners, too.

They get there,

and they may not stay there,

yet they’re there

wherever they are.

There’s a poem by

Mary Oliver:

She’s in her car,

sees a turtle roadside.

Being a naturalist,

she knows where

the turtle is going.

She stops, picks her up,

takes her there.

The turtle didn’t say no.

To Ponder

            1.   I take accommodation to mean service or acceptance

                  offered with a small sense of obligation.

            2.   It’s not negative, but not altogether positive either. It’s

                  conditional. Time will tell.

            3.   The mature person accommodates frequently and

                  without fuss. Something good may come of this uneasy

                  coexistence.

            4.   And if nothing does, so what? Nothing ventured, nothing

                  gained.

            5.   The Tao’s message is that the Master is like a turtle. She

                  always makes do with what is.

            6.   That’s a flexibility lacking in most of us, at least in the

                  always part.

            7.   Bottom line, at the least, accommodation is a first-rate

                  first move.

© 2013 Allan Cox, Allan Cox & Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.
__________________________________________________________

If you enjoy reading this story, you may wish to order WHOA! Are They Glad You’re in Their lives? available on Amazon Kindle and in print edition too. 

  • Kindle Edition: WHOA! Are They Glad You're in Their Lives?

  • Print Edition: WHOA! Are They Glad You're in Their Lives?

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