Thank you, Asia "First Lines" (6 days until seeing Adam)

Between 2010 and 2021 while living in Korea and Hong Kong, I have continued to write.

I have written 239 posts on this blog "Oh, The Places You'll Go", millions of emails - pretty sure - and at least 70 poems.

Here are the FIRST LINES of my poems in no particular order.  Well, actually that's not true.  The order in which they appear is the order in which they occur in my Google Drive.  That is, my poems are ordered by when they were last modified so these lines are ordered thus.  It is more or less a chronological ordering; I think you will recognize that. Enjoy.  

(Remember, this is a poem made of poems!)

First Lines

Here at KIS

Have arrived in Korea.  We are very tired.

First and foremost, I'm looking forward to hugs with family and friends and lots of

There's something about Burger King 

I'm a psychopath.

Since your inception 2 years ago you've had 5,265 visits

Just get something on the page.

Who am I?

When I was six my family lived in the country

When I beheld its yellow eye my heart

The summer I was 15 my whole life was lifted

Surely the current is strong, the water is freezing

haphazard

Today begins the march toward Calvary

A one-inch puffball becomes a mouse

Hidden in the early morning darkness

I used to dream bigger

The change is nearly imperceptible

It goes something like this,

Your Siren song cannot lure me

Twenty-five years together

They look out over the seascape from shore

Rock.

As the heart ever beats

When we left Green Bay we had no idea

A silhouetted shape of His suffering rises starkly

Distant skyscrapers line and stack like legos

A sensitive boy of almost 9

The air is heavy like a wool jacket

The students were carefully prepped

I got plump you got grey

So here we are in this life

The charming girl with the big smile and the non-stop chatter

You're growing me up

I am from the Driftless area of bluffs and streams, fossils and crystals

The day is sunny and hot in the Philippines

I've been wearing 50 for a week now

No one ever told me that learning was the Answer to the question of Life.

Who are you, Kolkata?

The tide is low at Tai Tam Bay

In life your spirit was big and strong and vibrant

You are newly born on the other side of the veil

You breathe in and out.

Your arrival took us by surprise.

An unfoldment of a dance whose only purpose is to dance

I see butterflies every day.

Birds of early morning call urgently across the jungle below.

May you know who you are.

Fight by staying put.

"The sky is falling. The sky is falling."

Rigby and I stand on the 115 year old stone footbridge at Tai Tam

From up here

Fresh, crisp air of a blue sky of lazy, white adrift

Uncertainty

Get up at your leisure.

You cried for nature and the outdoors.

It sucks.

It's lonely in here

Oh, Covid-19 you sneaky shit with an invisibility cloak

You are stepping out there beyond my purview.

Slow down.

Come in!

Dear

God

54 is realizing how old my parents are - I mean, I am now the age they were. . .

As I contemplate Sharon Olds' "Ode to the Tampon"

When I walk through the woods, feel the wonder of it, notice the bees and smell the flowers

You took away my peeps again.

On this day

Find a home for Rigby

Thank you, Asia, for providing the time and inspiration for so much poetry.