XIX

Our day to day lives. Our moments of thoughtlessness. Our time of drifting. Of trying to

get by. Hope to make it through. Hoping it will happen.

Joy will happen.

Forgetting other people’s thoughts. Other people’s needs. Are we not the center?

Is there other? Are we the other?

Others forgotten are drifting snow, quiet around us. Silent piles suddenly slowing our

steps.

Others as ourselves.

The distracted one, seems so rude. The hurried one, notices us not. Minor emergencies

loom large in our life. Forgetting the mundane. Forgetting the others.

Forgetting ourselves. Our memory.

How are these others? Who?

Are their faults our own? Like ours? Like days we wish not to have again? Days we wish

would return?

Our distractions. Our first loves. Visiting family. Friends not seen in a decade.

Our self in these others. Our shadow drifts in their faces. All seeking. All wishing. All

hoping to laugh.

XXI

Who first? Which thread?

Adam? Eve?

Mobius? Oroboros?

Wrapped through this woven eternity, one thread through the tapestry. Forward and back.

Color to color. Twists and knots. Warp and weft.

 Speeds up from days to years. Seconds to millennia. Follows the tracings. The shooting

star. The footprints in the snow. The spoor of blood racing in the woods.

Through eons of threaded lifelines. Across paths of our pasts. Lives with these riverbanks

unflooded. Those dry. Swim to the other side.

Where does the thread begin anew?

XXV

For face after face of grudging time. Of growling misery. Of grumpy dismissal.

Finding time to care. Finding space for hurting lives.

The wounded animal finishing its’ breath. The emotional scars of life. The ‘be strong’.

The ‘make it on your own’. ‘Don’t cry’. Self-reliant spirit stumbling too often.

Falling to hunger and pain. To failure.

Who lifts them? Who finds joy again? Our children remember the helping. The helper.

Remember hardening for safety.

Lessons of cruelty and hatred. Of meanness. Our bullies stand the yard as gladiators. Fall

under the downturned thumbs of the crowd.

Do we keep them from the sword?