“I am happy to make your acquaintance,”
I confess to the white and black cat
-Who was purring in my lap an hour earlier
-Who was king of all he surveyed
-Doing as he pleased on the lanai
-Posing and posturing
-Making the big brown dog shake.
But now, you crouch and cower and shy
Strung taut like a guitar string
-Out near the corn patch
-Where your claw is only one of many
-Where no one or nothing shrinks willingly
-But instead fights or flees
-Here on wild neutral grounds
I’m not sure you even recognize me
As we both search our way through
The tall grasses of fear and trepidation.
October is a month for cheating fate.
Each year I pull ‘round the corner of summer
Running on empty
And somehow it tops off my tank.
Once again.
It works every year, so far…
Thanks mom and dad for my birth on these days
Although I’m not sure that’s what you had in mind
In the back seat of the Plymouth that New Year’s eve
When I was conceived.
Or when you bought me a little two-wheeler
With those outrigger training wheels on back
(That never really did
anything)
I was launched down a bumpy, rocky driveway
(Aren’t we all?)
And have the scars on my aged knees
To prove, as tickets punched that
I took that journey.
~
Men sometimes play baseball late into October
By great lakes,
Those heroes…
If (and when) the wind blows from the cold creeping north
Snow may just fly along with the balls in the outfields
Still summer green
Even the umpires know this is cheating.
~
In maple lined backyards
Slumping piles of leaves are secretly moldering
Even before the rake is in the shed,
Only the worms are coolly pleased,
And the pumpkin on the stoop
Is destined to burst into that curious
Probable puddle of slime,
Embarrassed by its unfortunate smell.
We often cut short its time
By allowing children to gouge eyes and devil’s grins
Which spews its belly of goop and seeds.
~
It’s the rank ripeness of slumping gardens
And childhood adventures,
With only the tease of memory and time,
That fuel us into these darkening days.
I swear they are playing
A small flock of small brown birds
Flits from bending stem to bending stem
Grasses bowing slightly
Springing down when they land
And then up as they soon depart.
And if beaks could break a smile
The true story might be told.
It is a time of richness
A time of many seeds and
In this moment of joy
They eat fully
And fly freely.
I can still run when I want to
If I want to
Although nearing age 66
I mostly plod
Moving slower
Incrementally, entropically
With a bit less enthusiasm for
sprinting
Into oblivion
Or even rising to new challenges
Or the same old ones
(The mere challenge of rising
becoming
More and more apparent)
That horizon seems to be moving
in my direction
At its steady pace…
Maybe I need to check my dipstick
See what level my vital fluids
are at
Perhaps I’m down a quart of
testosterone?
I’m still in the race
At least in my mind
I can access that young man
Who did life so subtly
Effortlessly
Painlessly.
I can still run, when I want
But there is a cost now
A different one, and maybe
higher.
And do I really want to go that
fast
Tempting the wheels to fly off?
Or is it better, wiser
Just to plod?
You can’t blame them
That they are such bearers of bad news
(At least by our selfish assessment)
Vectoring disease while trying
By the powers of nature to do
Exactly what we all try to do;
Live and survive
Propagate and pass along
Our essence.
Born beautiful in their seeming simplicity
They take what they need
And inadvertently pass along others,
Those unclean,
They take too
Our lifeblood becomes theirs and
We are compromised
For their moment of life.
We are stung so that they may grow...
We all take
But just some of us know
The apparent outcome.
We learn to make the crane
Step by step
We fold the blank paper
Which has no meaning save
For its potential
We fold, and shape and give it
Our energy
Our love
And fold and fold and fold again
And there it is at last
As it always had been
The crane which I learned to make
And its peace
Which I am learning to make as well.
-Who was king of all he surveyed
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