State of Obvious

For George I see him in the trees Tall and strong, gangly limbs that try to touch the sky “Be strong,” they say “Stand tall,” they tell me “Reach.” I see him in the river Always moving, changing fast, full of stories “Keep going,” it rumbles “Cut new paths,” it beckons “Search.” I see him in the birds The cunning hawk, the splendid eagle, the curious sparrow “Fly farther,” they call “Hunt far and wide,” they sing “Soar.” I see him in adobe In the gentle carvings of a rough, strong hand In quiet rooms of light In many windows facing east To sunrise.

There once was a pirate named Steve. He was quite nice, as pirates go, and liked to run (or shall I say, hop) all about town shouting out things like: "Arr! There be me favorite silver spoon!" and "Arrggh!  I've lost me contact lens!" I didn't say he was a good pirate. Anyhow, one day Steve was out and about, hopping here and there, when suddenly his patch fell off.  His eye - where else would he have a patch?  The onlookers were shocked to see that Steve had a wooden eye behind that patch.  It was rolling around in the socket, slivers of wood blinking like splintery eyelashes as he fumbled for his lost patch.  One of the shocked onlookers took pity on poor pirate Steve and picked up the patch with two skinny fingers.  Her name was Delly - the helpful onlooker, not the patch. "I've found your patch," she said, helpfully, dangling the patch in front of Steve's good, non-splintery eye. "Me patch?!" said Steve, reaching for

I, along with much of the world, have been thinking about my goals for the coming year.  I made a list and it was pretty broad, but also pretty do-able.  On purpose.  The one thing that bothers me when these resolutions roll around is just how full of failure they are, often by implication or by comparison to the list from last year.  We (general society we) often laugh because we only made it a few hours, days, weeks, months into our resolutions.  And then we fall back into old habits.  We (that general we again) forget just how hard it is to change ourselves.  Have you ever tried to reshape a rock?  That's us, right there, rocks.  Round and hard and set in stone.  But, changeable over time. This year I made my list AFTER I thought about my successes from last year.  I did not bother recounting my failures, though there were assuredly many.  Instead, I looked back (as objectively as I could) and decided it really wasn't so bad after all.  I graduated from college (a long t