The Way I Remember It : A Reminder To A Sister

Two tiny plastic dogs: one white, one black. A set of Scotties.

The kind of cheap plaything parents buy for a noisome child in the backseat while traveling the New Jersey Turnpike. The kind of plaything a desperate single-mother with few prospects, and no money, few friends, and two children buys in desperation at the rest stop to quiet a noisome child---even though the purchase empties her purse of her last bit of change.

And still several miles (and several tolls) to go.

September Blues No. 3 : September 2004

Autumn day
quiet with crickets.
Flutter, leaf.
Grass blades bend.
Cat squinting in sunlight.

Nothing more beautiful.

September Blues No. 2 : September 2002

I took my ancient Baedeker to Italy
in an attempt to make my European tour
with a nineteenth-century frame of mind.

Despite cell phones and high speed trains,
despite jihads and Intifadas,
despite bomb threats and terrorists,
I went out with my blinders on,

oblivious—
or as is nearly possible without
taking both my eyes out—
oblivious to the modern world around me,

marching like E.M. Forster
out of the greenwood;
or like Ruskin
swinging my Seven Lamps
over cobblestones
and "night-cold grass"
lit by glow worms,
in places patinated
with rust and dust,
under the porticoes of the past
where rich and indolent ladies
would sweep their skirts
while hoping for romance.

I took my ancient Baedeker—
and my modern baggage—
to Italy.

September Blues No. 1 : September 2002

Endlessly I seek
something eternal,
seek the secret things
in dark hints of dust,
but discover only selfishness.
I see only the funeral shroud
of truth
twisted in a lump.

There is an answer
germinating there,
embryonic.
I know.

But I will never see it.
I will never decipher
its miraculous simplicity
until I've dropped my concern
for this flesh,
until I've given up
the white boy's blues.

September Song

Dead relic LA.
Lights on the roadside
at random.
And for what?
One vast stupidity.

What's the use
of a bend in the road
when the dirt lies unbroken
in every direction?

To represent
that one man
made a decision?

(Specific.
Insignificant.)

To prove that his life
wasn't pointless?
That he had chosen something:
one arbitrary mark
of his will?

A sterile choice,
but his.

Choice makes meaning
of what doesn't ultimately matter.
So, a path across dirt fields
with a bend in it,
to prove that he was here.

And made a difference.