A Grain of Salt
Alice counted them, the Chlorine electrons:
"But now you total up from seven to eight!"
"Yes", they shouted harmoniously, all at once
"We're in partnership with Sodium Syndicate!"
"Together, we are Sodium Chloride
You may call us the Salt of the Earth!"
"Seven of us bond with Sodium's one
and our valence shell shall have no dearth."
"Sounds very cooperative", smiled Alice,
"But I wonder which one of you is from Sodium?"
"I am, I am", then "He's the one, he's the one"
Came eight loud responses, in unison.
"How rude, they always speak at once, and
They all do have the same name too"
So Alice thought it was pointless, really,
Guessing among electrons, who was who!
"Could you explain," she couldn't help asking
"How come the charge on Sodium is now positive?"
"When even if it lost one electron,
"Surely the others still make it negative?"
"All the negativity of the electrons put together
Is kept in check by the atom's nucleus."
"An electron, if lost, makes it a positive ion
And, if gained, is negative just like us!"
"You seem quite upbeat to me", said Alice
But what, or who is this Nucleus you mention?"
Nervously they looked around and whispered:
"Don't speak of it now, but every atom has one!"
"The positive charge in the nucleus
Keeps us negative electrons in balance"
"It pulls us in but we are too agile
And so goes on this atomic dance!"
"This molecular tango is quite impressive,
I guess I exist and that's all its fault!"
"For now," she concluded, "my head's spinning
So I'll take all of this with a grain of salt!"
Slice against the Grain
Slice against the grain when you have this cut of meat. You have to select the correct knife, and you have to sharpen it, too. You know it is more dangerous to use a dull knife than a sharp one. Hold the steel steady and run the knife's edge at a twenty-degree angle over the surface. We used to have a whetstone, and it sharpened blades like a dream. But we lost it when we moved into this God-forsaken apartment. But I shouldn't say things like that. The apartment is nice. I wish the landlord would let us paint the walls any other color than mustard yellow, but it is what it is. The curtains brighten the room, and so do the plants my sister bought us.
You were too young to remember the house we had in West Virginia. The weather there is nice. Nicer than here. The snow hasn't let up for days. I hate the snow. Especially in the cities. It gets trampled down and turns the color of ash. It hides the pitfalls in the sidewalks and soaks through your shoes. Snow in Colorado is like a blanket of crystals. In New York, it turns into balls of cigarette butts and garbage in the gutters and on the sidewalks.
You know better than to smoke, don't you? That's what killed your grandmother. She smoked cigarettes. I broke the habit mostly. I only need one when your dad comes home. Kicking that habit may be the death of you if you ever start. Habits are hard to break. Your uncle died trying to get off the alcohol, but you knew that. But he was a Catholic. I hope he was good enough besides the alcohol to make it into heaven. You've always been a good girl; better than the rest of us. You go to school in the mornings, and you take care of your mama at night. I wish you didn't have to.
Someday soon you'll be on your own. Maybe then you will do better than we have. You won't smoke like grandma and your mama, you won't drink like Uncle Buck and your daddy, you won't be on the streets like Ben. You'll be a good girl with a good job, and you'll find a good guy.
Cut against the grain.
Waiting
Grain
One grain of sand
It's helpless
it can't hurt you
but wait
its today
and its slowing
growing
inside my brain
I can't take
a second
Can't take a second more
Want to close up
lock up
come out no more
But I wait
One moment
And that grain, it subtly grows.
Nudging its way in the shadows
it grows
it grows
it grows
it grows
but wait!
Is is there?
Is that grain if sand
in there somewhere?
Is it hope?
Is it unity?
Is it something I dare not name?
But wait!
Is it just a tickling persistence,
an itch I've been wanting to shake?
But wait!
Is it nothing?
Is it something that might save me here?
But its not.
It's just some sand.
Its just a singular grain
and no matter how hard I hope, and wait, and pray.
It's a singular grain of sand.
Grains and Motes and Soupçons--Oh, My!
A grain of salt is all I ask
A modicum of decorum is all I need
Is a smidgen of propriety too large a task?
A dollop of integrity on which I can feed?
A scintilla of clever will do just fine
A mote of note will light your spark
A soupçon of style like smooth red wine
Around cortical islands where you park your quarks
An iota of biota in my brain will awaken
An anima of conscience, regret, and bravado
A speck of shame is surely mistaken
When a shred of decency's held incommunicado
A fleck of flack so flicked as feedback
Will monosyllablize diction and discourse
Preen away pedantic weeds begging weed-whack
And render me laconic and my code, for this, Morse
Terse ain't no frickative, frackative, or worse
A colander of holes large enough for the garrulous
Kissing the Blarney Stone is a scurrilous curse
The use of one's tongue—all other times—fantabulous
The Beach of My Dreams
It's a bit mad
Don't you think?
That there is this
Liminal space
This place
Of transition
Between all that is
And all that is not
From a mountain
To the oblivion of the sea
From the infinite created creation
Solid stone accretion
To the horrifying cold void
Of the deep
From Masculine Order
To Feminine Chaos
And in between
Is nothingness
You must be destroyed
Re-made, Un-made
Before you leave your world
For another
As my mortal body decays
Falls apart into nothing
And so it must
If my soul is to travel to the next world
Just as the mountain, the forest
Our world entire
Must dissolve its form
If the soul of the world is to return to the womb of creation
We fear the nothingness of death
Simply because it is difficult to see
But that does not mean there is nothing there
It is simply, hard to exist there for long...
Bound by the mortal flesh
Every once in a while
A little shell, a glittering gem
Washes up
A message from the beyond within
The infinite ocean of the finite heart
This world is the illusion
It is not the unseen that is the mystery
It is the "seen" and "known"
Hiding in plain sight
That we think we know so well...
Every grain is a message meant for you
Made of quartz
Made of bone
Made of pulverized sandstone
They're trying to talk to you...
Go meet them there
On the beach of my dreams.
I heard lots about the wonders of Grain...
I had heard alot from that illustrious old lady,
How she would buy a little bit of grain
And then she would clean it,
And then she would cook it,
And the family had enough grain to eat,
because Grain always kept every one happy...
because Grain would keep every one healthy...
I had heard alot about the wonders of Grain...
From that illustrious old lady
who couldnt keep still...
From Grain to Flour
She arched her back one more time, before bending back down to her task. She thrusted the large pestle round and round, thinning the grain few at a time. The granite mortar screeched as she mixed again, round and round, for what felt like hours. After a moment, she let go of her tight grip of the pestle, and gave an appreciative sigh of the beautifully thinned flour that lay before her eyes.
"Yara!"
While pushing her matted hair off her face with the back of a hand, she turned her head at the sight of the three men, coming in their cavernous home with large sacks balanced on their shoulders. "More wheat for us, mama," the boy said with a grin. Yara closed her eyes and groaned.