Sunday, April 30, 2006

An upside-down poem

Unbalanced.
World spinning, feet frantic, I must get to you.
The need frightens me.
I am nearly undone.

Dangerous.
Oh, you are that.
Lovely, lovely to me and awful.
Touch you, hold you.

Transparent.
What I will do for you, the smell of you,
The blood racing through my veins for you,
Carrying bits of you to bits of me…
Melding.

Some laugh, some shake heads and pity.

It makes me not one bit less enamored of you.

Thanks to you I am getting nowhere.
I am getting there fast.

Man on Bicycle in the Cold Lighting a Cigarette

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Perspective

Prodigal - Rashly or wastefully extravagant; a prodigal life.
Aspersions - An unfavorable or damaging remark; slander.

Everything is a matter of perspective. A ten-year-old’s summer in the cotton country of West Tennessee was ninety repetitions of the same day. Days stretched the length of the hot blacktop highway from Keeling to Brownsville where all of my friends lived. Friends I talked to on the phone and tried to conjure up like the shimmering mirages that danced on the same hot asphalt. Ninety days is a long time when you have lived 3650.

I have lived 16,940 days now. Ninety is small, oh, so very tiny. Why, I’ve probably spent the equivalent of ninety days plucking my eyebrows. One day, I put my daughter’s new first grade picture in a frame with twelve spaces. That afternoon it was filled and she was off to Austin to college. In about ninety days she will graduate and begin grad school soon after to make a good life from her own perspective.

Prodigal - Giving or given in abundance; lavish or profuse.
Aspersions - A sprinkling, especially with holy water.

Sometimes time brings a different perspective, a second look, an alternate meaning.

Lavish blessings on you and yours.
OldPoet