Complexity and change

Ancient nurse log

I’ve never seen this ancient nurse log before
I mean I never noticed this ancient nurse log before
In all the years that I’ve walked down this path
to the spit
and back up
Including last Sunday
Just a couple hours before the call
that mom had a mild stroke

Every time we come here
I remark to Panos
That the entrance fee envelopes
Have never changed
It’s always been three dollars per family
And

The envelopes are light blue
They have always been
They always will be

Even after they built a fancy new open-air visitor center
The light blue envelopes didn’t change
They have a perforated receipt
That leaves a teeny weeny strip of adhesive
That you have to lick
And it never stays down properly
They ask for your city
And how many people in your party
The volunteers always asked where we were from too
When I was a kid

They were always so friendly
Never in a hurry
No more volunteers

But I always tell Panos about the friendly envelopes
That never change.
I wonder what’s
so damned comforting about a light blue envelope from the 70s?

But I was talking about a nurse log

Everywhere I go
Everything animate and inanimate
At least everything not human-made
but some of the human-made ones too
come to think of it

Everywhere I go
Are metaphors upon metaphors

Strange
That though so many
and so vocal
they never seem cluttered
Or overly chatty

Usually I pause to marvel

Often I feel almost
overwhelmed by their
beauty and depths

Sometimes they
invite me further
To a conversation
With words

I usually want conversations
But not always

It’s not really about avoidance

Sometimes you just have to slow down
a little bit,
like this:

word.

pause.

swallow.

feeling.

thought.

more feelings.

more thoughts.

wow.

that was a really, really large word.

wasn’t it.

yeah i might be ready for the next word in a decade or so.

Today’s conversation
has far too many words
for its own good
also too much
capitalization and
punctuation

How generation succeeds generation?
How intertwined we are!
How we nurture whether we will or whether we won’t (!)
What exactly dies, and doesn’t, when we die???
“What’s love got to do with it”
Look who grew on the ancient nurse log
Do we sibs see the seedlings in each other
If so
Is that good
or not
“It’s complicated”

Too many metaphors
Too many words
Too many thoughts
Too many feelings
Too many really really really complicated relationships
between things
and/or ideas
and/or people
emphasis on
the people

Not too many
Just too rapid
Slow the fuck down already, please.
Not the facts and the changes and the deaths and whatever
Just the conversations.
We need a chance
to catch
our breaths.

Some changes come in the blink of an eye
Some changes come from one week to the next on a trail
Some changes are decades of growth
And someday become old growth

On a undying nurse log.