To be a friend and though the knife
You presented was startling
And yet expected, life has gone on.
Free and easy discourse is not
The order of the day and cannot be ignored
When it has a chance to happen.
This morning I bought a pair of socks
And a birthday card for my nephew Will
Who lives in Florida with his young wife Jen.
(He is young too. Don’t think he isn’t)
And watched a man’s head turn at the sight
Of a small-waisted woman “carrying the goods,”
As he put it, allowing himself
To sound like a vulgarian.
Do women really know when they are beautiful,
And is it to their advantage? My friend Ed says
It can be a prison from which they have trouble
Emerging but he spent a lot of time in an ashram
And is coming from a different place.
Right now I am looking out my office window
Through a screen that mitigates the power of the sun,
Causing me to see the building opposite
In a kind of haze. This muting of its reality
Might become maddening did it not
Present the incentive to step outside
And see the structure with nothing coming in between.
Does any of this make sense?
Don’t expect a stranger at your door
Or the connivance of coincidence
To bring me where I clearly don’t belong.
Just imagine clear-sailing on open water
Toward a destination with the self-important name
Oblivion or eating a doughnut on some sun-shaded porch.
It’s all one to me so long as I can be in the embrace
Of my present reality, some song of the universe singing
In my hidden ear which these poor words can only fail
To represent. Sooner or later I hope to arrive
At the meaning of what it is I’m saying.December 2003