~ Warm sunlight and gentle air on bare skin.
~ The rhyming language of the woodpecker and the squirrel.
~ A possible confusion between acceptance versus denial.
~ 1940s vintage Navy peacoat, missing button.
~ Doves in the tallows, like newspaper on a windy day.
~ A puzzlement that cemeteries are so much lovelier than where the living live.
~ The bright arc of the space station overhead just after sunset.
~ Thanksgiving Day and a Significant birthday bookended by two more momentous events.
~ Family.
~ Not Family.
~ Details assiduously attended, from within a serene and drowsy stupor.
~ The exchange of poetry with a distant brother.
~ Old photos.
~ Sustained eye contact with a kneeling officer, speaking On Behalf of the President of the United States.
~ Ariel's song, and "Stop all the clocks."
~ Another birthday.
~ Lovers.
~ Missing aikido. (Again.) (Still.)
~ Genealogy, and echoes.
~ The problem of the folded flag, never to fly again.
~ Processes and passages. Pumpkin pie and preserves.
14 Days and 21 Lines After the Death of the Author's Father
Ross Robertson
Still Point Aikido Systems
Honmatsu Aikido
Austin TX, USA
www.stillpointaikido.com
www.rariora.org/writing/articles
@phospheros