2025-08-12 I Inquiry I It’s the Waiting I Flint Sparks

“The Maples” ~ Marie Howe I asked the stand of maples behind the house,
How should I live my life? They said, shhh shhh shhh . . . How should I live, I asked, and the leaves seemed to ripple and gleam. A bird called from a branch in its own tongue,
And from a branch, across the yard, another bird answered. A squirrel scrambled up a trunk
then along the length of a branch. Stand still, I thought,
See how long you can bear that. Try to stand still, if only for a few moments,
drinking light breathing Tricycle, July 23, 2025 Atlantis:
3. Michael's Dream Dreamed c. 1993 by Michael; written by Mark Doty Michael writes to tell me his dream: I was helping Randy out of bed, supporting him on one side with another friend on the other, and as we stood him up, he stepped out 
of the body I was holding and became
 a shining body, brilliant light
 held in the form I first knew him in. This is what I imagine will happen,
 the spirit's release. Michael, 
when we support our friends,
 one of us on either side, our arms under the man or woman's arms,
 what is it we're holding? Vessel ,
shadow, hurrying light? All those years 
I made love to a man without thinking how little his body had to do with me;
 now, diminished, he's never been so plainly 
himself—remote and unguarded, 
an otherness I can't know the first thing about. I said,
 You need to drink more water
 or you're going to turn into 
an old dry leaf. And he said, Maybe I want to be an old leaf 
In the dream Randy's leaping into
 the future, and still here; Michael's holding him 
and releasing at once. Just as Steve's holding Jerry, though he's already gone,
 Marie holding John, gone, Maggie holding her John, gone, Carlos and Darren 
holding another Michael, gone, and I'm holding Wally, who's going. 
Where isn't the question, 
though we think it is;
 we don't even know where the living are, in this raddled and unraveling "here."
 What is the body? Rain on a window, 
a clear movement over whose gaze? 
Husk, leaf, little boat of paper and wood to mark the speed of the stream? 
Randy and Jerry, Michael and Wally 
and John: lucky we don't have to know 
what something is in order to hold it.