The Wind

I don't remember the first time

I ever felt it,

or saw or heard it, but

I know it is there.

I mean I know its here

or at least it was a minute ago.

And before that I saw a picture of it,

evidence that it was there

or here or somewhere.

It was in an art gallery where Mr. Wyeth had

done something or other that

moved me, really moved me although

I don't know why.

This involved brushing paint on a canvas.

It was a wistful scene but then a few minutes later

I saw another work that some artist had left behind

about a shipwreck, and it looked pretty severe.

So it works both ways.

Don't know how or when

but I remember too, some poet or his

singing about it, and he said the answer was

blowing in it,

the answer to what I don't know

maybe how many times must the cannonballs fly

or the winds of war blow or

the winds of change rearrange

everything that is or ever was or ever will be.

A few days ago I was in that windy city

where stuff had happened

long ago, back in the day,

and I remembered

part of what had happened

but I wasn't sure if it had happened to me

or if I just remembered it from some

news report I saw or some

painting I viewed or collective memory from

my g-generation

and then I remembered that ye must be born

again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear

the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from

and where it is going; so is everyone who is born

of the Spirit

and that's enough for me.

You feel it?

I'm not making this up.



King of Soul

SFMuni bus #48

Yesterday I took the #48 SFMuni bus ride from the Mission district over Diamond Heights to the West Portal.

I ambled around a bit, wandered lonely as a cloud through a corner of Golden Gate Park, then strolled straight up Haight, past Ashbury to Masonic, then northward through the Panhandle to Fulton and by n by took a long jaunt back to mid-town and the San Francisco Opera house.

This morning, Pat and I hopped on the #48 and rode out to West Portal. Now we are kickin' around, having taken a trolley(modern version) over to catch a view of the Pacific, which we had seen earlier this year, but that was down the coast a bit, in Costa Rica.

I like the #48 bus. I was surprised to see it depicted in this mural, which we were viewing yesterday afternoon on Balmy alley in the Mission:



At the present moment, early Monday afternoon Sept. 29, 2014, I am sitting at a Starbucks preparing to send you this little digital communicado. You may see the skullish fellow in the painting. He is is typing away on a laptop, as I am at this moment, and probably hoping to connect cyber-cytizens of the world to some idea or story that will lead them to hell or heaven or somewhere in between. I hope the artist did not have this old white guy (me) in mind in that detail.

That cannot be me in the pic anyway, because I am not wearing a black robe. I'm wearing a Carolina blue shirt.

As for the excellent painting jpg'd here, I recommend you study it closely. It is very well done. But somehow I feel not entirely empathetic to its angstish message. On the other hand I can tell you that the painting itself is evidence that not all is well in this present arrangement of things: this truth I acknowledge.

As for the worldy injustice that is alluded to herein, I could write a book (yet to come.) It would be a long book, the fourth I have written, a labor of love, an opus, although others have probably done it better than I.

Nevertheless, If I may offer one brief advisement with which to leave you, it would be: read Matthew 5, 6,7. The message there is, I believe, even more powerful than, say, Marx, Mao or Che. And even more revolutionary than this painting, but not as colorful.

Glass Chimera