Sometimes I see something and it is just a trigger for some lines, this would be one of those times, a simple thought, just spilled out of my gut, onto this page, how um, romantic, if not gross… but seriously this was just inspiration from a frame, some old wooden power lines stretched across the vast salt marshes of southern new jersey… which made me write this…

wooden power lines
make me think of the plains
and open spaces
stretching prairies
golden rolling fields
wide winding roads
that inevitably lead
to the feet of mountains
and the gateway of the west

notes… tonight I was at my cousin’s house, one block from the beach in Monmouth Beach NJ…  seemingly I was watching a life I left, or was supposed to have, it isn’t that I am unhappy, but it is strange to observe the changing of generations, the “kids” I knew are now all young 20 something party animals, my cool cousins are now almost the older generation, my uncles and aunts are all 80 plus… life is strange, I am glad to observe it, I must have looked like a weirdo to them, just kind of kicking back and taking it all in, a watcher, no need to fit in, comfortable in my own skin but content to stand by myself, I must admit that I thought about her… how she would have been right next to me and I would have brought the bell to the ball in my mind and heart, I would gladly have had the most beautiful girl in the room, because she always was, to me, but I am happy for the others, my brother who is on wife three, my cousin from philly who has gotten back with a great guy (as far as I could always tell, and I am a good judge of character), a cousin with a new beau, her older sister with the same old who seems a new man when wall street leads to ocean views, and my uncle who’s birthday this was all for, let me be that when I am 80 and I will claim victory, but to look out, and see three generations of your family…. that must be something, I saw it, but I am not of it… but somehow I do embrace it even if I feel outside it at times…