Life is a slog. Tao is sweet.

1

Since junior high school no one has corrected my grammar.

Nobody has dictated to me what to write.

No one has paid me to write this, but not that.

And nobody has ever told me what to think or even what to eat.

Good thing, because it is normal for me

To think in terms of metaphor.

I do not eat sugar and I do not serve sugar.

I recently told someone that if they eat sugar

They are eating like a child.

That also holds true for writing.

If you write sugar, you are writing for children,

You are writing like a child, for children.

2

I've told you what I think.

I do not pull metaphors.

When I write something it goes into the world.

It goes ahead of me.

It looks back and asks if I am coming.

Down the muddy path,

Around the dangerous corner,

Up the ragged cliff.

My words are not 74 years old.

They are not tied to my body.

Or my life-span.

When I write I come to my senses.

The next sentence is inevitable.

3

What a slog life is.

I'm so tired,

Mostly because of my age

I feel like I've been climbing a mountain.

This is not a great achievement,

The mountain I climb is my responsibility,

And I am almost to the top.

I am at that indescribable point when I know I have made it.

When I reach the top I'm going to sit down

On a level with the clouds.

I will let my pounding heart have a nice rest

While I look around 360 degrees.

And then I'm going to start down,

But first I'm going to pick a valley.

4

Spirit, grant me time to reach the valley.

I think I know how to be a better person.

Words are lighter in the valley.

Up here they carry weight.

Subject, verb, object.

When a cloud blocks the sun it casts a cold shadow.

The wind is the boss up here.

I want to be free like the bird

But my soul sides with gravity.

I will leave some of my heaviest words up here.

I will build a cairn to mark where I summited.

As I place the last stone,

I will address the mountain. I will say:

Thank-you. Thank-you for being so tall,

For making me huff and puff and perspire,

Now you must let me descend.??‚

5

Just one little story now.

When I was teaching at a local college

I used to find fault with the young men.

Later I realized they were just being young.

What got to me was how fickle they were.

They would assign equal value to everything.

Whatever they were doing was all-important.

Or the opposite, not important at all.

They were like pinballs lighting up targets.

I wanted them to prioritize what fed them.

Eventually they wound up teaching me.

We taught each other.

Before the college folded I became more like them.

My main focus became to slow their passage,

For soon enough they would be in the world

Living the poem of their lives.

6

Climbing the mountain was my responsibility.

But now, so is descending.

Climbing is yang.

Descending is yin.

The right valley is Tao.

There is no need for sugar in Tao.

Tao is sweet.

Ahh, you see?

I can't take that line back.

It was inevitable.

It has already gone into the world.