Knight to Queens Bishop Three

A dandelion seed parachutes gracefully
from white lace and stiffened brown cordage
upon the concrete bricks
of our backyard patio.

Dandelions of yellow buttercups
and white cottonheads
dot our backyard
like stars in the night sky.
Bees of all sorts
feed on their desire to live.

A spindly green plant
has tiny green bean like seed pods
four petaled white flowers
call to its Love of life.

Tiny purple flowers
dot a green ground cover
and has graced a sandy space
between the bricks
numbered and defined
by weight and size.

A bush of yellow flowers
in the back corner of our yard
is made Love with by bees.

One strange plant
has grown about three feet high
and has sprouted beautiful yellow flowers.

The tall grasses
that have bent so beautifully
in the spring and summer breezes
now wear brown bunches
atop their stems like hair.
Each stem has spent its life
to continue life.

At the end of August
I will cut them all down with a weed whacker
gather the pieces of their broken bodies
and take them to a landfill
or composting station...
but the roots will remian
and their life will return.

When people enter the walls of my work,
a care facility,
it is for one of two reasons,
extended recovery or to die.
In the alzheimers unit
in which I work...it is only to die.

The job I have chosen to do
is to work with these folks.

My work is to offer dignity
and quality of life
to folks who will most likely
not live outside those walls ever again.

Each is a treasure
all of them still
have something to offer
most make me laugh
and we enjoy each others presence
like gifts from the creator
in which we are.

Although I can do the messiest of work
with complaint and joy,
although I can share with my wife,
these folks, and others,
The one I rarely share with
...is me...

Most folks I come into contact with
I see as worthy of Love, Life, and Joy
and I share with them mine
but I rarely share it with me
...but when I do,
it is always with guilt, self-humiliation,
feelings of worthlessness.

When I share with myself
it is mostly mochas and snacks
because mochas and snacks
are guilty pleasures soon gone
and don't constantly remind me
of my feelings of worthlessness...
self-hatred.

Sharing with Shusli
is a gift of Beauty and Love.
Sharing with myself...well...

My tribal hush money
will be here soon
and I will buy myself socks for one.
Socks that I will deny myslef
because even though most of my socks
have holes in the heel,
those holes don't bother me enough
for me to share new socks with myself.
But I will buy new socks
because I do Love myself.

I'll buy a book about chess
and a computer chess game,
maybe a hand held one even,
because as a kid,
I was pretty good at chess.
As an adult...well...

In prisons,
they play a lot of chess.

My work is in a prison of sorts
where folks are not allowed to leave
for different reasons
and no chess is played in that prison...
care facility...
end of life care,
dignity, humanity, sharing.

But maybe I've learned to Love myself
and am reluctant to admit it.
Denial is a powerful addiction and all.
My wife, Shusli, reminds me of the Beauty I am.

And as I relearn to play chess
wearing unholy socks,
at breat at work
between working with humans with alzheimers
slowly stepping through the gates
of the end of their lives,
or on the patio of our backyard
as our days of residence there
draw slowly to a close,
or maybe in a prison
of one sort or antoher,
or maybe with you,
I will occassionally think
of wise words from a book
I read early in life:

"There is a simple test to tell
whether your mission in life
is over or not;
If you're alive...it isn't."

A tiny dandelion seed parachuted
from white lace
upon the concrete blocks
of our backyard patio
and spun a little dance
like a ballerina.

Knight to queens bishop three.