You care too much for nothing much:
The trumpet blasts of nearby freight trains
sounding warm tones of solemn longing.
Your boy’s smile, so easy and sweet –
despite a mind elbowed with doubts.
The shiver of leaves in the gloaming;
the piping laughter of unseen children
fountaining in a nearby neighbor’s pool.
Your baby girl trying her first ballet shoes,
stretching to pull them on while pointing her toes.
The way the lamps on your street
caress away shadow rather than illuminate.
How she laughs to herself
when she reads a good scene,
like a pony-tailed little girl
with a secret so sugared
it tickles the back of her tongue.
Also:
The verdant berms in the morning.
My Gd, thank You.
Indulge in the verdant berms,
the green slopes, fertile dunes,
valleys, vegetated swales,
greenest of grasses, dignified pines,
swiveled palms waving fronds
like braided dreadlocks
rocking positive vibrations
under morning skies the blue color
of life in potentia, the blue of waiting,
alien emptiness opening like lost crevices
of a great mind rebirthed
at every turn around
the center of your universe.
That kind of blue.
And the gridline marked green
wrapping streets that circle
back around into each other
if you make the right turns.
Indulge, feast, easy on the pedal,
arrive alive, treasure the heat of
the tropical sun through the glass.
Pull into the parking lot –
the bell’s about to ring –
and you have so much to do yet
before starting your first class.
Above, the prattle of propeller planes and private jets
traffic your sky with the conversation of commerce.
The smell of the sea so close you can taste it.
Adjust your one and only tie. Push back your hair.
Keep on that Bon Iver song, that solemn longing,
ride the saccharine tone from the car to the glass door
where you pause and breathe and pull to
the inevitable citrus smells
of boundless energy and curiosities,
anxieties, ticks and trills and bells,
and the cadence of the aleph-beis,
young boys bent over their books,
the sensory bombardment of a day
looking ahead into the week.
You want to wrap yourself in it all,
bless it all, for the mercy of living
where your worst worries
are of the most mundane sort.
Nothing gets done but you never stop.
You believe in increments.
Drops bore holes in stone.
But you have no time to suddenly
motor to some park for poetry
and leaf crunching and cool fall air misting your breath,
and hot coffee and smiles reflecting careless
winsome and blithe streams of free conscious thought
running like rivers of shining eureka.
You have your moments, though,
barbecuing some herbed chicken
while sipping an icy cold Old Chub beer.
And at dusk in your backyard
the trees are impossibly beautiful.
They cradle blessings as sea breezes
gently rock the canopy of leaves.
It’s true:
you care too much for nothing much –
delineate your world with words,
define your path with movement –
how else better to savor the glory
of nightblooming jasmine and briny wind
than on a walk to nowhere in particular,
on a path divine, of curious design,
constructed of daily dues to creation,
the service of the heart, a prayer,
in every vision, in every thought.
Image from Flickr.
