Little Red Feather

The little red feather that escaped from the whirring sucking vacuum cleaner is still crouched near the futon, hiding, like I used to, behind the legs of my mother. Little red feather leftover from Halloween wings. It isn't an innate messiness that I possess, but rather an inattention to details. No. Not inattention, just a healthy sense of the picture overall. Forest for the trees. Because in the grand scheme, does the little red feather's presence next to my futon interrupt the overall feeling of my room? These words sound rote and memorized, because of the transportation time between bathtub and computer. Words forced into timelessness without evolution, like our view of the red man, forever standing on the plains of Iowa with a feather headress and a bow & arrow. Perhaps I shouldn't cling so tightly to the inspirations that come in moments of quiet, driving down country roads, hanging delicately in half-sleep, or while concentrating on scrubbing behind my ears. I'm not sure where to go with it all, but there seemed to be a message. Lost in the rote memorization of it all. Shruti gone wrong. But the mere act of listening to these inspirations has caused the antennae on my skin to perk up to the slightest noise or whisper, my eyes to scan my surroundings for similes and metaphors and my eyes to wonder in their most insightful way, what the color of hunger is. I used to think it was merely words that floated through me, sometimes channeled into translation on paper, but the more I learn the more I realize that there are pictures there. Worries. Memories. Imaginations. Ripe for the taking. So I write, and the little red feather hides. And life continues.