Can you see me now?

Clink....
You're standing on my doorstep...
January rain dripping down your nose...
And I'm
almost surprised,
and not at all,
at your totally o~kay~ness with just parachuting right back into my world
unexpected and
half a dozen years older.......
I offer you coffee and you'd rather a beer....
and I know then what I knew all along....

You're more fun after 5 o'clock....
And in my imagination....

But, I see you now.....

Words and artwork (C) Singleton

Our House is a very very Hippie House.....

I wander around in circles, my fingers tracing memories in big fat summer dust, settled everywhere.... This House, these walls, these stories....painted everywhere......whisper to me...

And now we're waiting.  I touch things.  Move them ever so slightly.  Echo the little chant..."Keep, pass, toss" and decide their fate in an underwater , upside down state of mind.  It's time to Go.  To Move on.  And to look back, only with Love.....

I wonder, if like Nadine once said, someone will have to spend a fortune whitewashing these walls, sanding over our carvings, blasting the mosaics from everywhere they turn.  If someone will cleanse our house of it's spirit, it's blessings, it's internal tattoo's and I wonder if
for just a moment or
forever....
a tiny hippie haunting will dance on....
in the shadows....
the little creaks at night....
the accidental music of a woodstock wind.....

Good-bye little house and a gazillion earthly belongings.  We're packing up our memories, a few good pair of jeans, two cats, two dogs, a bicycle, a coffeepot, Grannys high poster bed, and Nana's bamboo bar.....and heading to the River....to live in a Gypsy trailer....

and laugh....once again.......

In a place called Peace....

The Reflecting Tide....

I blink.....
slow and double eyed...
a lazy man's wink....

And a gazillion years have passed.

The grass is up to my knees,
and the wishing pond is a bejeweled frog's farm....
My body aches..
from Time Traveling,
falling,
bumping,
bruising....
forgetting to watch out,
hold on,
count to 10 before I jump.....

I'm old again....

I drink my beer cold
and hobble in high heels....
I wrinkle just a little bit more with every summer tan...
I can still party all night,
but it takes me three days to raise my head when the music stops...
I'm  in Cahoots with Kimbies...and my baby sister Love...
and sometimes total Strangers that I've known forever
or just a moment.....

Tonight,
when I stopped by to visit Mom....she was playing the harmonica...
Beautiful and Blonde and in her very own world....

She smiled with (My very own smile 25 years from now)
and for a moment she wondered who I was.....
and then she hugged me....

And showed me her circles....
Painted and drawn,
dribbled on paper towels and canvas and paper back books...
Circles with eyes and occassional noses and fins and tails and melting peace signs....
Circles with sun rays and stingers and puddles and weeds....And words....

Shes' an Artist, you know.....

And I do know....

So I smiled with My Mother's smile (25 years before today) as I waved good-bye and glanced at the row of glistening Metallic Blue Shrubs lining her porch......

and remembered the little can of spray paint on her dining room table...fluorescent orange....
Just Waiting.........on her imagination.....

And me,
to follow her footsteps.....

Drained....

Midnight in the kitchen.

The 99 cent bubbles
swirled,
twirled,
cascaded one
right after another down the drain,
each one another hopeful contestent for the Miss America Pageant...
savoring her moment of fame,
bottom lip quivering,
then disappearing forever...

Tiny little Hungry Man Dinner carrots
bobbed,
drowning,
but pretending for a moment to be orange buoys in a silver sea.

I turned the water on harder.
Hot and Cold.
Everything at once.

I splayed my fingertips under the spigot, water splattering, spraying, splashing everywhere.

I cried.

And then I saw them.


The butterfly wings.....