Need

I sometimes slip into my old practice of listing things I need – another shirt, some better boots, more stamina when working out – but the truth is that something bigger than me makes a much better list. Call it God, or the Universe, or Life, or just Inspiration – there’s a power, I sense, that sees what I need and somehow supplies it. When I occasionally get my busybody self out of the way, and just listen to what this wiser power is saying to me, the things I really need (as opposed to want) seem to unmistakably shine in my thoughts. This morning, for instance, when I was doing some of this silent listening, it became obvious that I didn’t actually need another shirt, but instead, perhaps I needed just those moments of silence during which I was carefully watching Delycia’s flower blossoms bend in the morning winds. Whenever I can set aside my persistent and restless ego, and simply listen to this soft but measureless voice from somewhere, I sometimes understand that all I really need is the revitalized blood my good heart is constantly giving me and the thoroughly new thoughts my mind is always making. I sometimes see that this particular moment – any moment – is all I really ever need. 

On our bike ride this morning, about six miles on lovely Wheeler Road in Stonington, we paused at this scene,

and all I really needed to do at that moment was simply look at what was there – the grass, the old hallowed wall, the luminous meadow, and the barn sitting in venerable silence. Something said to me that looking was what I needed right then – and so I looked.

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ALL WE NEED TO KNOW

Overheard as some bicyclists passed:
“We know all we need to know.”
 
We do, but we don’t know it.
We don’t know that we do know
the sheer dominance of this moment
right now, the endless inner sunshine
and storms and starlight and awards
of this very moment, the way a brand
new universe is waking up inside 
this moment and making music no one 
has ever heard before, the music
of freshness and inventiveness,
the effervescent and indestructible 
harmonies of here and now. We know 
this moment because it is all there 
truly is, and, as she said as she 
rode past us, all we need to know.
 
 
 

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Two poems my grandson Louie and I wrote yesterday, during our two-person poetry class:

THE MOON ROSE 

The moon rose, 

filling the air with mystery, 

the stars surrounding it like its children,

the light leaning down over the earth,

wanting to escape

the bond of partial invisibility. 

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LOUIE THE DUDE

Louie, a boy with 

bright eyes,

a smile of endless curiosity, 

thoughts that throw themselves into the sky, 

and nerves that sometimes drive him crazy, 

is cool.