Posts for June 21, 2024 (page 10)

to the elderly man mocking me
Sir, this is my first hill of the day
pumping your arms
marching your feet
will not make me pump harder
 
It’s not how fast I get there
It’s about my destination
here for the long haul
Climbing these hills forty years
Longer than cyclists here have lived

They don’t mock me
marvel at my consistency
I know every hill on this journey
when to down shift, coast or 
shift to a higher gear

Seen many on my journey
through the years disappear
the slim woman walking in a dress
an old white man running barefoot
the black woman with many dogs 

I wonder where they have gone
as others will wonder one day
where I too have disappeared
right now I’m enjoying the ride
focusing on getting to work on time

So much in Central Park to enjoy
the shade and diversity of many trees
beautiful landscaping of the grounds
flowers, meer, waterfalls, ponds
birds, squirrels, raccoons and toads

Figured out how to make an unpleasant 
journey pleasurable so its not only the
destination its also the how I traveled
I ride at my pace on the road of my choice 
Upon arrival I make that my own as well

These are the notebooks,

telling the future what trails

imagination has blazed

across the years, our lives.

These are the illustrations,

capturing the outlines of

faces, places, wonders

we have seen along the way.

These are the cartographies

from here or there to elsewhere,

the maps of love, children, wars

and peace, drawn from our hearts.

And this, my dear, this is the one

and only compass I have used.

No matter where I’ve wandered,

its needle pointed back, to you.

(after the undated and unattributed photograph,
“The Journals of Lewis and Clark,” in the
American Philosophical Society’s collection)

I am an alien.
Never realized it before.
But sitting here in church watching
A performance cheesier than anything this side of Green Bay,
Rolling my eyes,
While others watch in awe and reverence,
I realize I must be from some other planet.

 I do not belong here.
I used to feel that this was my place,
Having cut my teeth on the back
Of an ancient oak pew.

Now it all seems foreign.
It has changed,
But I have changed more.
And I have read enough to know
I am not the only one.

fifteen years

still so fresh
stinks so bad

morning dove coos 
reconizing my grief

I remember I once prayed aloud at 4 in the morning

Gazing upon the pink wisps of cloud above

I thanked God for cotton candy skies

And His Grace that was just as sweet

As I now drive down the streets

My hand out the window

Coated in pink light

I’m reminded of this prayer

And realize the irony

Of thanking a god

Who was used against me

A weapon

My mother once dove into a pool
to save her drowning boy
and before that, at birth,
had him pulled
in the nick of time
from the rising well of blood
that flooded the womb.

Twice saved, many more times
patched up and sent back out
to do battle in the world.

She lies here at her last stop,
mute, gray-skinned, anxiously
tugging at the hem of her blanket,
my presence a disturbance,
a ripple in the still water
of her brackish brain. 

It’s okay.

You’d rather escape than
mutter comforting noises.

A “care” emoji and you’d scrolled
my mortality (and your own) into
the air above your monitor.

But I still thank you—
genuinely—
for your clumsy embrace.

On Rome’s Metro Linea A,
a stop a thousand breeze by
when the tinny voice announces,
Prossima fermata, Baldus degli Ubaldi—
Do they wonder as I do who the bald guy
at the next stop was?
Uscita lato destra.  

From a famous family of shiny pates perhaps?  

Turns out—go figure—he was a lawyer,
14th century Perry Mason, big-time consigliere,
tops in Roman law and author of a stack
of commentaries and opinions,
who earned the title, Lucerna juris.
Today he’d be on TV ads and freeway billboards
in Albuquerque, offering to win you a settlement
for that chariot accident or a scuffle with the pope.
Pope Urban VI called 1-800-BALDGUY
for help in sorting out a schism and an antipope
(Urban VI v. Clement VII). His crew: the Postglossators.
Whether they sat in taverna after court glossing
back a few beers–
or maybe turning up
in episodes of Lex et Ordo
(two beats)
Codex Justinius.
who knows?

But get this:
in all the Google images,
he’s wearing a cap.

Fog clings to the yellowed pond
like breath on glass; we wear winter
coats to ward off April’s chill.

I help my son bait his hook,
swallow a soft, pink pang of guilt
over the worm’s pierced body.  

Now I teach him how to cast
his line, settle into stillness,
keep his eyes on the muddied water.

It’s a practice of faith, this waiting
for sacred movement – a tug
on a string, some iridescent glimmer.

Close as a backyard garden, the desk at the corner of a long room, you can almost touch the Irish Sea on the train from Coleraine to Derry. Surging layers of white on white. A swerve and we’re barreling towards farmhouse, cliff and church, past Castlerock and Bellarena and into a double black tunnel. The train wobbles and jolts away from the sea. A shaggy raven alights on driftwood. Downhill Station is brown-beige and six shades of green. Blue-pink horizon, one farm after another and another.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Through the dark hedges,
raven clears a path. Makes room
for the blind man’s cane.

A grandmother with a pixie-cut the color of milk. Her lips curled in a half-smile. She knits — black angora interlaced with pink spangles — in lockstep with the train’s rhythmic wobble. Her granddaughter twirls the skien’s long tail. Across from them two brothers talk about yesterday’s bombing at Guildhall Square. The work of unorganized ruffians, they hypothesize.

“Much less trouble since they built the Peace Bridge over the River Foyle,” says the youngest. He offers a copy of The Sentinel to the grandmother, who has quit knitting to stare at the restless incoming tides. “I think of a giant origami when I cycle over the bridge. It’s like I’m flying through a strand of DNA.”

After war you hear
young brothers chattering
while folding paper. Songs.