The Planet of Souls

    My favorite singer Sting sings songs from his album "The Soul Cages". He sings about the "Island of Souls". About people, us, earthlings, humans. Men, women, a few kids, perhaps a few cats, dogs, and turtles.

    Nah. About just us humans as primates. We are human, even though many animals and some plants exhibit intelligent behavior and instincts, reasoning or crazy acts.

    We are between the best and the worst. We are found in the middle.

    Us souls in the middle. We do things routinely, but some things we do randomly. 

    Many of us mow lawns. In the United States the lawns that we mow, or cut with tractors and all those machines that chop down and hew the grass. The grasses of the United States, that most of us see everywhere, adds up to the size of Iowa. We collectively mow the territory of Iowa, some of us weekly. I try to push it to 9, 10, 11 days. No one pays me do provide this service. I only did the backyard, which has some steep slopage.

    I used some old sneakers, which maybe I bought in California, if so, over two decades ago. I had used those sneakers here in Virginia, and I liked them. But the souls of the sneakers were loose and coming off, and sure enough as I mowed as the sun was setting and it got darker on this hot, 90 degree day of mid-October. Post southern hurricane Isaias.

    Cuece and cose are different verbs in Spanish, despite what my co-worker said that the campesinos mispeak, los "no educativos". Maybe she did not say it that way, but she was saying that the uneducated rubes in El Salvador get it wrong.

    Con lo mismo que se cuece. Las habanas, etcetera.

    The souls of my shoes, the souls inhabiting the planet. We all intermix and mow the grass, sometimes falling off and being left by the wayside.

    But we find ourselves, and we collect our souls, and we maybe tape them up, and perhaps we will use them for another day.

    Another mow. Another lawn cut. Other grasses sheaved or torn, cut and collected.

    Iowa, Iowa, Iowa.

    Calling all Iowans. Like Sam, with whom I worked a few months this year.

    Calling all souls. On the feet, the ones that we wear that support us. The souls of the dead, or the unborn, or the ones that we all posssess here and throughout the universe.

    Soul music, soul food; it's not all just a black thing, Black thing.

    Our souls all come together and we mow, cut, collect, sweat, breathe, observing the light fade out.

    Fade out. Like some of the souls of today, slide into the netherworlds of the past.

    And off our world, away from the planet. Perhaps the molecules of the dead are planted under grasses in cementeries, or the ashes of the cremated, and they convert into dirt and other things... Compounds or elements of helium, hydrogen, carbon and all those miniscule particles.

    But, the soul remains. The sould cages. The sould rages. Our souls: we prevail.

    Like Israel. Like God. Like goodness. Like all the similes of all existence.

    Prose and poetry, you have it all here and there.

    Poetry elides into prose.

    Words and sounds and thoughts and ideas.

    Ideals and precepts, marching onward forever.

    You, me, and God makes three.

    But there are more, however. However, there is more than just us, but.

    You know. You cut the grass with me, and saw the sneakers fall apart.

    My souls fell to the wayside; they were collected, gathered, recovered, restored.

    From sea to shining sea.

    Like my daughter's future celebrations.