taller than I pictured
and sudden as the spearmint
growing wild at the edge
of this careful garden.
I am strolling up to the door
of my next life,
the third date with myself,
after
I’ve charmed myself
as best I can,
smiled as I wove my story
kept my baggage
mismatched and colorful.
I’ve tilted my head and studied
my future over candlelit dinners
trying to picture us together
as I describe to myself
the shape of dreams I’ve gathered
herding them back each time they wander
shutting them in the yard till now,
the third date,
the one where I go all the way.
Category Archives: Learning
I Am
Another Problem With Education
Is that teenagers and teachers
do not care
about the same things.
This week alone,
I’ve heard that Mali
sounds like an island vacation spot,
somewhere near Tahiti.
And not one of them knows who Nelson Mandela
is, though someone hazarded a guess
that he might be a fashion designer.
However, they were prepared to discuss,
potentially forever, the guy on You Tube
who jumped out of a plane,
rushing through the sky
so fast he broke the sound barrier.
Here, at last, was someone they admired,
or at least a place they could recognize.
Hawk and Mouse
A red-tailed hawk swoops from the telephone pole,
Glides above the marshy stand of cattails, stalking mice.
The god of his particular world. I try to turn him into
a reminder to myself–something about the beauty of nature.
Impossible today. I worry about those mice and can’t let go
of the moment I’m replaying as I drive home
—the boy who assured me he doesn’t care if
he passes her class,if he never graduates,
doesn’t care about anything at all, is aggressive
in his Loud Declaration that he just doesn’t care.
I wish I could tell him to lay down
those twin weapons of aggression and apathy
which do not serve him well
but he is not a boy who Listens to Advice.
I wish I could warn him about the hawk,
but he is one unhappy mouse in the world–
not the kind who hums through his days,
not the one who cowers in the high weeds,
afraid that every shadow might be the hawk.
No, this boy would be the mouse who
pounds his fist against the base of the telephone pole
shouting up to the hawk, Just try and catch me,
See if I care. He is the mouse who will still be criticizing
the world below
as the hawk carries him away.
On Hectic Days
Wisdom whispers
in my jagged, jangled head:
Dissolve
into these distractions
till there is only the doing
and no more you at all.
This is always spoken
in a calm, cream-colored voice,
dressed in silk,
smelling of incense.
I seldom follow her advice,
preferring to cling
to this sneaker-scented world
of eraser dust and denim,
with its Technicolor talk.
One Direction
She clutched the book in her arms,
held it against the t-shirt emblazoned
One Direction, the boy band of the hour.
You should read this book, she told me.
It changed my life.
She is 14 and not ironic.
Enthusiasm sparks off her skin
and scents the air around her like mint after rain.
You lift your head from Important Work
to smile back at her as you take the book.
By next year, probably, One Direction
will break up and their t-shirt
end up in the Goodwill bag.
But you offer a silent wish
For one thing to never change:
that being knocked to the ground in joy
over a book will lead her forward forever
throwing off light and small green leaves
pointing her always in the direction of another book,
the next and the next, building her path as she goes.
Resolution
Here’s to the year about to unfold:
My wish for it is not
to lose 10 pounds
or meditate
or change jobs
or exercise more
or learn Italian
or take a drawing class
or see the British isles
or try to appreciate opera,
or Shakespeare or sushi
or pay better attention
so that I notice she’s dyed her hair,
he’s shaved off his beard,
or any of a thousand other things,
besides hair, that I miss
because I live by distraction
with tiny breaks to remind myself
to breathe–
my wish isn’t even to remember
to breathe
without reminders—-which is so basic
you’d think I’d have mastered it by now—- no,
My wish is this—-
To stop expecting disaster.
I plan to stop planning
for the crises, all flavors,
tomorrow could deliver.
I know things crouch in darkness
and will pounce or be stumbled into
Eventually.
But this is the year I stop counting on them,
stop setting the table with good china for unwelcome guests
and listening for the doorbell as dinner bakes.
When troubles knock,
at least they’ll have to get their own damn dinner.
Efficiency
In work boots and plaid and feed store cap,
he looked like an elderly farmer
next to me in the stationery aisle,
one calm spot in the supermarket rush hour.
He told me he probably owned a thousand pens.
Whenever a new one caught his eye he had to have it.
I smiled and backed away, tired, late getting home,
shopping list lost as usual.
Sometimes I have to be stern with myself:
There wasn’t enough time to stumble
into rambling conversations with eccentric strangers.
But he said he used them all,
nearly shouting as I reached the end of the aisle,
because there was so much to write and draw every day.
Hours later, I haven’t saved any time at all–
still wondering, wishing I could trade this back
for time to wheel my shopping cart closer
and ask him to tell me
what he’s drawing now.
Job Security
There are stacks of paper—
agendas, plans, scores, data
to show we were here.
We sit all day in meetings
mouths moving, hearts failing,
minds spinning frantically, spirits on lockdown
as we carefully step
around each of the thousand truths
clothed as teenagers
who wander the halls
outside our closed door.
Mapless At The Crossroads
Go forward, mapless. Give up searching, for directions are everywhere. Watch for patterns: Those moving clouds, the grass clippings dusted across the cobblestones, the pigeons on the cathedral roof, the swirl of seeds the old man scatters from his paper sack, the steps in the dance his little granddaughter dances across the lawn, twirling her skirt wide and dreaming of bells and umbrellas while she waits for him to finish feeding his birds.
Her dance doesn’t look like directions, at first. Skirt swirls wide, fabric billows and collapses on itself and billows out again, over and over as she spins. Shadows dance across her path—clouds, her own body, the small shadows of pigeons as they come to land for those seeds, circle, rise again to the spires.
Make this all the map you need.
Science Class
He reads the rules out loud
(though everyone has them on the handout)
enunciating
every syllable so clearly
that students are transfixed
as rabbits caught in headlights.
They can stop thinking now,
since it’s obvious no time will be
allocated in this lesson plan
with its carefully stated objective in ALL CAPS
to discuss whether the animals
they dreamed of researching—
manticore, minotaur, megalodon—
are extinct or imaginary.
Puff Of Smoke Poems 