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She hums to her knitting at the table near the window

Suds circling and the hum of dryers

It’s too bright and the doors open and close letting in the cold

He wears a hat

The next one does not and opens a book

There are hats and hats and hats against the cold

Clinking of coins down the shoot

A woman is talking sternly to herself

If you want a house or a car, you got to work for it

She works figures in a notebook with a pen and yellow highlighter

Knitter knits and hums quietly

The laundry lady talks to another lady about the schedule and the snow

The hatless man turns another page reading silently

I wonder what’s going on at the library

People coming in out from the cold to read a book or a magazine

To use the computers and there are few places left where people mingle

Outside their strata

The tall woman looks at me with relief but I’m not part of her set

Whatever she thinks

I nod to her as I did to all

$15 dollars of laundry – the sheets and towels and jeans because they

Don’t wash easily in my bucket with the socks and shirts and underwear

There’s no good place to hang them, but I do anyway

The heavy things

They are only laundromat dry

I saved a dollar by spreading them out over furniture for an hour to finish

When I got home

What gratitude I felt to enter my home

There were presents in the mailbox and I opened them and began to cry

It’s all so hard sometimes

Where did my life go?

I look at the beautiful wooden picks for my guitar

And a book about living the music

I don’t make many plans any more

I do each day what needs to be done

Run the vacuum, make some food, sing some songs

Write down some thoughts and more thoughts

Wash my clothes in a bucket and hang them over the baseboard heater to dry

Maybe next week, go to the library and see who walks in out of the cold

Who looks at me in relief, and who passes by unseeing

And wonder what the figures on the paper mean

And did the knitter finish the knitting

And did the hatless man finish the book

And do we all circle around each other warily or looking for shelter

And do we ever find anything at all

In libraries and laundromats

In life or in death

Is there ever an answer to the question

What is the song of the suds and coins

Or the turning of pages

Or of entering a new day

And can we sing it beautiful this time

Flowing water swept away the expression

Smooth tranquil ice chilled in the winter cold

An exodus a trampling a song

Ideas exchanged and never meeting

Meeting and never changed

The end is near

They cried and ran and flailed

But they peeked over shoulders

Hidden under covers in the dark

The earth trembling from the stampede

A sound hailing a shake-up

The trumpeting noise

Disrupting the flock into flight

Some land on the pachyderm

Others in disharmony

a cacophony of opinions

Some run counter to the rest

Never getting off the ground

And this is how

Great changes come about

A shake up and a resettling

A restructuring building something new

With tools honed over the unfolding

That went before

The trumpet blew

The birds flew

Where we land is a place

We never knew

Covid

Doctors

ER

Nurses

Teachers

Issues

What do we treat first

How Urgent is it

Who will perish

We weigh one life over another

Government flaws

Fears and misunderstandings

Reigning and raining and reining

Battles for control

Losing impact

Burning the future for immediacy

Out of balance

We will topple ourselves

The solutions are there

Outlined ideas

Who suffers while we plod forward

Against obstacle after obstacle

Built of greed

Teachers flee

Doctors give up

Nurses go

When no one will help you or teach you

Can you scrape food from dry mud

Bandage your broken heart with leaves

From a dying tree

Will you sooth the scrapes with yesterday’s cloth

Reciting verse after verse of sonnets from moldy tomes

Bury yourself now in the tomb in the ground

Cover up your nakedness with transition and transform

Dust dust walking

Ashes ashes talking

You’re almost out of time

Can you fall asleep under the stars at night

Or will you waken again and again

Reaching for something you can never acquire

Peace prosperity home

Build it then

Don’t lag or lack or lap up the lies

Build it in balance

Be ruthless cutting down cutting out paring away

What damages us

This whole earth is our home

Let’s make it grand and natural and flowing

Instead of an old barn in barren field with the roof collapsed from rotten wood

Very dominant on the downbeat carrying a quarter note sequence on the guitar that makes you want to stomp your foot keeping tempo, with your head bopping. The chorus is very catchy and quite eerie. I dig it. “I understand you’ve been running from a man who goes by the name of the sandman”. It is known that the inspiration for the song comes from conversations writer Dewey Bunnell had with returning Vietnam veterans and their fear of being attacked or killed in their sleep so they relied on medication to fight the urge to sleep and meet the unavoidable, sandman.
 

http://theskepticsreview.weebly.com/music-review/america-history-americas-greatest-hits

I had trouble sleeping the first ten years of my life – recurring nightmares, traumas, fear. Then again at various times in my life under deep stress, or processing out past experiences. Being able to sleep is sometimes such a lovely miracle.

I’m concerned about how slow we are all moving in the face of real and present dangers – it’s like a dream where you can see it (the threat) but cannot move swiftly enough to avoid catastrophe, but we still have time if we move together to solve the most major issues facing our collective humanity, our collective life here on earth.

I catch myself shuffling when I walk

Downcast

Down hearted

Lower than that

I am sinking into the earth

One step after another until I am there

Among the rocks

At the bottom

Of forever

The infinite is here within

Each step

Raised and lowered

Feet and eyes

I cannot look up

Until the sun cuts through

The clouds

Until I see blue blue

Reach for me

I have gone nowhere but down

The sun has pulled the clouds between us

Every day now colorless

Reach for me

Let there be color in this world

Let there be light

Let heaven descend once more

Remind me I am made of dust

Reflecting the center of my solar system

I step and straighten

Outside held up by force of will

To stand tall and be proud

My eyes still meet the ground

Begging for shelter

To not be left out alone in the rain

I dance

My eyes meet the ground

I close them and raise my face to the rain

I am quenched and drenched

Dancing and hoping for brighter skies

A break in the clouds

A respite from the torrent

To try again

To wrest joy from circumstances

Dim