Pink Rain

This suspected felon still managed to pose for what is possibly the happiest mug shot of all time. Michael Whitington toothily grinned from ear to ear as the camera clicked for his official prison snap on Tuesday. It came shortly after the 45-year-old had been charged with one count of robbery.

Happy New Year to all of you all across the planet. I am grateful to have friends in Singapore and Australia and France, in England and Canada, and people I love are currently visiting in Mexico.

I am now firmly settled in the volcanic basalt on the rim of the bluff above the Willamette River in Oregon City, Oregon. I awoke this first morning of 2015 a bit amazed. I have never been able to get my head around growing old but here I am a month and a half into my 69th year. I am looking at 70 next which simply boggles my moral sense.

I feel like I am getting away with something here. I have always favored larceny and subterfuge. I have thought I could be a good spy if I had bigger stones. I was the only honest dope dealer in San Jose... Heh. Well not the only one. That was over forty years ago.

I swear I stopped robbing banks over thirty years ago.

I mean it.

Now I write poetry, itself a kind of larceny. I know it's true. I am stealing this stuff from somewhere.

Pink Rain

I hope you get it,
get how difficult it is
to turn wood into
lighter than air craft.
It may appear that I am
all giggles and grins
but the spells I weave
take the stuffing out of me
and leave me hollow,
cracked and now leaking
the hydraulics of my soul,
an oily pink rain.

November 1, 2010 1:47 PM