"Everything you need is here"a song I wrote that needs music(with thanks to Jean R. for the reminder)

You walk down a rainy street
Looking at the fallen leaves
and think of all the crazy dreams you had

You can't find a bit of moon
And winter has come too soon
but it's never really all that bad

chorus
Because everything you need is here
even when the sky refuses to clear.
Everything, everything you need
is here.

You wish you'd chosen something else
You keep tripping on yourself
Just trying to keep the horizon in your sight

You think your grass is hardly green
You're sighing at the things that could have been
You're never still enough to see what's right.

chorus
But everything you need is here.
Not yesterday, tomorrow, or next year.
Everything, everything you need
is here.

If you don't know where you are
just look at your feet.
If you don't know what to say
just say what you mean.

You saw what you thought you wanted
But you stood by the door and stayed outside it
You feel so far from where the road began.

You threw your pennies in the river.
You want more than this but think you'll never
But somewhere there's a voice that says you can.

chorus
Because everything you need is here.
Your life is calling you my dear
Everything, everything you need
is here.

Everything you need is here
even when the sky refuses to clear.
Not yesterday, tomorrow, or next year.
Your life is calling you, my dear.
Everything, everything you need
is here.

beginnings

At 10, she rode her bike fearlessly, even though it was just the streets of suburban San Luis Obispo, even though her neighborhood was flat and sleepy and without any visible drama; she made it happen on her bike, turned lawn spigots into an obstacle course, used the gravel at the end of her driveway as a place to practice skidding, riding hard in what the highest gear afforded her before coming to a jarring stop before the low pile, sticking her foot out on the pavement, threatening herself with a sprained ankle, a broken wrist, skin torn into bits.

How she learned to ride this way, enamored with danger, she can’t remember. She can remember, at 5, plummeting from her bicycle on a steep downhill and landing flat on her face, her bottom lip a balloon for almost a week. She can remember how loudly she screamed when she tumbled and her body hit the pavement at full speed. She can remember how much it hurt to fall like that, but what she can’t remember is how she ever got back on, and how, five years later, she was attempting a set of tricks on a different, faster bike that would undoubtedly cause her more harm, that could lend itself to further disaster. And yet, she rode.

More importantly, she wonders how she can replicate that same fearlessness now, that charge ahead, that feeling of sheer capability and nerve. She wonders how she can get that kind of wind back in her sails again.

. . . . . .

Let’s start over. Say you are a girl of 10. You are a tomboy. You are a little afraid of what other people think of you but what you aren’t afraid of are the elements. You will run around in the rain for hours to see how soaked you can get, so you can see how much your mother will gasp at your foolhardiness once you get home. You will leap from enormous sand dunes without looking where the bottom is. You love getting dirty, cleaving buttons from their notches when you play an impromptu game of softball dressed inappropriately. And yes, you will get on a bike and attempt a trick you have no experience in executing, nor any teacher to help you out with the particulars. All you know is the picture you have in your mind of your bike catching air, your legs splayed like the ones you’ve seen in those posters of Motocross professionals. All you have is your bike, and a Sunday afternoon, and an empty driveway and a quiet street. No one is watching, and that has no bearing whatsoever on the kind of risks you are willing to take, because all that matters is that picture you are carrying, you being airborne.

. . . . . .

Let’s start there. No one watching. Quiet. Emptiness. Sunday. Just you and your bike. You can use another word for “bike.” Any one will do. You and your heart. You and your love. You and your poetry, your hands, your eyes, your desire, your wisdom, your lack of wisdom, your simple but urgent instinct to leap, change shape, improvise, reimagine, recreate.

Let’s start here. An act of creation. Risk. Forgetting that you fell, once, long ago. Forgetting the injury, your fat lip, your skinned knees, the gravel still embedded there. Knowing that each fall was unavoidable and perhaps even necessary. Seeing the intelligence of the fall, and then forgetting even that. Starting over. Starting now. Starting here.

ice skating

“Just fall,” she said, and of course, at 13, falling’s easy.
You do it everyday, ballooning embarrassments
in the locker room, in English class, singeing your hair
over the Bunsen burner 6th period, a mispurchased outfit
calling attention to your breastlessness, your too-bony hips,
a school dance dismantling your chances for a boyfriend.
the lack of everything you wish would hurry up and get here.
So when she said it, her stare widening under arched brows,
there was disbelief and impatience in her voice, in the way
she eyed my frame, how she couldn’t understand the difficulty
in allowing this self-induced tumble, a brief horizontal flirtation
on the outside corner of the rink, where there was no one watching,
no one there who would stare at me with their leveling ridicule
as I lay on my knees to get the idea of what falling would feel like.
She didn’t understand my hesitation, didn’t understand why I didn’t
just shove off and go, speed down the lane like the rest of the skaters,
make long wide arcs in time to the Christmas music blasting out
the speakers rink-side, didn’t understand my wobbly comportment,
why I kept looking down but not out, why I insisted on being left
behind while she and her sister glided past like little snow angels,
like mini Olympiads. She couldn’t see the lock of my ankles
against the skates, didn’t know the heat of my back at the inside of my jacket,
my stiff arms, my flighty, fearful heart doing its best to keep me upright.

“Just fall,” she said and I couldn’t do it, not even when she showed
me how, splattering herself comically on the ice, buckling her knees,
stretching her arms flat against the cold wet, not even when it looked
so easy to just give into the rules of gravity, that sweet slip earthward,
a tumble to elicit giggles and revelry and a reason to form an impromptu
snowball to hurl at a younger sister, not even then. Standing rigid
on her right, never too far from the edge, my palms outstretched to
ward off any possible fall, I had never felt so fragile,
so far from safety, ice so slick, a sea of skaters swimming by,
“Just fall,” she said, “so you know how it feels” and instead I thought
about the poem I could write about ice skating, a beautiful poem
about grace and twilight and December and the visible air
coming out in bursts all around, small children squealing their
way around a circle, teenagers holding hands shyly, an old man,
maybe a grandfather, teaching his granddaughter something of his
past, I thought about that poem, and perfection, and the glide
and symmetry of skates, and how white the ice was, and the
mother grip of winter, and the warmth inside afterward, hot
drinks sipped gratefully, all this love intact and pure.
And then, lost in my own impossible dreaming,
I fell.

at first, I envied them their easy love

at first, I envied them their easy love,
their spot of sun, their sand-kissed boy,
their wagging dog, their picnic sandwiches,
the blanket holding a cache of toys and sunscreen
and novels still stiff at the spine.

at first, I envied them their sweet lemonade,
their wide rectangle of soft, forgiving grass,
their roomy car, their sweaters waiting in the back seat,
as I rode past, solitarily, on a bike
that would take me, straining,
up the long hill to a long bridge,
where traffic and a strong headwind would offer
little in the way of a beautiful distraction.

on my back, a bottle of tepid water,
my license, a credit card, two dollars in change,
three small tangerines rolling about vulnerably,
a thin cotton shirt that would not lend itself to warmth
if the weather turned sour.

on the return trip, riding back toward the water,
sun dipped low but not yet down, I passed the spot
where two hours before, a family had frolicked perfectly
in the wide swath of Sunday. They were on their way
back to the car, now, but I heard them before I saw them,
the toddler, too tired, screaming his last exertions,
Dad heaving the carcass of the picnic over his shoulder –
a dirty blanket, Tupperware minus their lids - and Mom,
balancing the boy against her torso, had to let go
of the trio of pails and matching shovels she’d hoisted
in her fist. The novels, unread, got lost somewhere
in the shuffle toward the car.

I was still armed with half a bottle of water, had spent
none of the coins on frantic calls to friends, was never sidelined
by a flat next to an unfamiliar street corner, had not needed
my license or the credit card to get out of a bind. The tangerines
I had eaten somewhere between 1 and 3, and now their rinds
lay flat and serene at the bottom of my knapsack.

Coasting past the family, I saw Mom swivel in my direction,
and Dad eye me as he popped the truck and ditched
the dirty things inside. At first, I envied them their easy love,
but riding, solitarily, on my sturdy bike, arms free
to steer my wheels anywhere I pleased, I wondered if, in fact,
they envied mine.