Decades ago the only thing
that seemed strange to me was me.
Once when a lesson plan went bad
I ratcheted up my students’ attention span a notch
by hopping on my desk and cocking an ear,
as if listening to something hovering overhead,
a spaceship perhaps,
and you never heard such a silence
until finally somebody laughed and said,
Aw, Mr. Field, stop jiving us. Crazy shit like that
and never the same stunt twice.
Back then my idea of a nature hike
was taking a midnight stroll in North Beach
searching for a dealer who’d sell me a lid.
But let me tell you straight as a plum-line
the way it is now:
the thought of sliding around high
in San Francisco’s wind and fog gives me a chill.
These days I don’t want much to happen:
mornings unfolding themselves
like sheets with all their wrinkles ironed out,
followed by afternoons
staggered by the grace of it all:
trees with pretty leaves on them
towering above the green brocade of my garden,
and nights when the moon shines brighter
than God on one of his better days.
Years so uneventful my diary writes itself
without any help from my pen.
Now here comes the funny part:
yesterday I took a walk in the park
and crossed paths with a stranger
who was playing a game
with an electronic glow in the palm of his hand,
hard evidence he was unaware
of the wind’s great dance in the leaves.
Perhaps you thought I was reaching back
for words like wind and leaves
to tell you something beautiful.
Christ, there are moments when all of us
have no idea what that means.
***
No comments:
Post a Comment