Back To Town

I vaguely remember some technique used to prime a pump, where you add water to the pump first, and then jack it up and down for all you're worth, in order to get the water flowing from deep in the well again. I'm going to try that by posting a bunch of my old writing, written in Taos, Santa Fe and Port Townsend between 2018 and 2020, that I'm pretty sure will never see the light of day for any other reason. Why do I bother to share such writing of suspect quality? Because my well, for the first time in my life, has consistently run dry for six months now. I don't understand why it's happening, but reading these old poems, of which there are reams, gives me hope, because they came from a part of me that I've tried my damndest to protect for the last 20 or so odd years of my life—or as long as I knew there was something trying to kill it, and therefore, something to protect. I hope it's not dead, that part of me where creativity flows from. I guess I will just have to find out.

Back To Town

Back to town
Out of the mountains
A town where life isn't hard
You can walk to the store
Afford a car
Live in a house, and got time to wander 
Things aren't how they once were
Life moves into different phases

I'll always remember, and never forget
The time when the mountains were way beyond the horizon
And I never drove my car
Lived on a broad street
In a eight room house 
Built for one family
And I walked a long way with an old camera
Just for the length of the walk, 
and to go under oaks, 
and for what I'd find, 
on the way to the store.
And no one knew who I was, then
And neither did I