Meeting local artist friends in evening….

And then, in evening again
we open our studio garages inside
and let one another in.
the skateboarders start trying to find the best hill to descend,
and there is that thrill of seeing what we have all been really
doing all day.

This friend’s been sculpting again in Mahogany memory boxes meant to carry all types of past stories,
or something even now cherished-some key which still matters, fits each lock
this friend tonight shared his treasure boxes.

Why do we wait til evening to show our secrets?
Why not share together all day, as birds do…in mid-air dew exchanges…

Still, and in stillness we do say to one another, finally,
here is what I’m really working on in life.

But it takes so long to say so to one another.
It takes many evenings, at least.

Yet, the wood of one another’s secret labors, is so smooth
your skin melts in its hand, and knows itself.

“i tried to listen to the wood and space here to tell me
what it wanted to become. Where it was
on its journey, and where it wanted to go.” my friend told me tonight.

We tried to steward things forth into their unique becomings…we
continued…

This friend whispered this evening, “the unseen labor is where i live.”
Not a bad address, i thought in myself.

What we were really working, on is akin to listening well
i think,
or at least honoring what was, what is, into what will be.
We are stewards of the unseen narrative of things.

Still, this evening’s glow was particular in my friend’s garage studio
lit by lanterns which he designed to match evening glow of sunset.

Wherever we were, it was worth noting, forever.

My friend’s boxes had three types of wood (each, in course, representing different seasons of his story, different weights of glory), each
carrying a different rhythm or density of memory, an inner pacing;
he then taught me this evening, as the sun started to make
us silhouettes,
each wood’s capacity for holding what it knows-
mahogany can do this, pine this, cedar another, oak a longer story-
what each is able to do (or contain of being)
or, what it was meant to do, once in listening hands
once, it finds itself, that is. Once, perhaps
a father cares or we receive what is already there
waiting in wood.

Once the right hands touch the wood, it knows itself
as we all somehow do, who we are, and what we are meant to do.
Things know themselves in the right hands.

Or as he put it, as things have room to become
they do, remarkably well.

Maybe this one, is for a skateboard for these kids
i suggested. He laughed. A good way to make quick memory of wood…
rushing down the hill in their descending glories
trying to glow before they crash.
But that’s another story, for another evening or day, perhaps.
This evening was simply about opening our studios
to one another in hope
and seeing my friend’s treasure boxes,
which somehow we all are.