Sunday, June 30, 2013

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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Sunday, June 23, 2013

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.
__________________________________________________________

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. 

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Sunday, June 16, 2013

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. 

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