After Jack
You start with the legs crossed
or kneeling or sitting in a chair
with your hands just so or no
particular way at all.
The breath comes slow, deep
or else it doesn’t: who’s to say?
In the brain an alto sax plays
and then Pedro strikes a guy out
and then there was that one time
you told someone how you felt
and it didn’t go well
and then something is scuttling
through the leaves outside
and then you think of calling her
or think of writing to them
and then dinner tonight,
maybe try the Indian place?
Oh that’s right
you’re supposed to be breathing.
I mean you ARE breathing
otherwise there’d be a whole new
set of problems but you’re not
paying attention and really
attention is where it’s at,
where it’s all it’s at, as
Lenny stumbled that one time
after he’d taken up lecturing
rather than bits.
Breathing, right, you won’t forget
again
but you will probably because
today the zoo is full of little imps
and they love jumping
on the Samsonite of your memories
and then there was the time
you took the dog back
because it bit a kid in the neighborhood,
busted right through the door
and chased the kids around and got one
and then you think of the way
they asked if you ever expected to be
with someone like them
and how that question has never quite
sat right, you know? and yet
you did expect it
but now it’s over and it always
comes back to that in the end doesn’t it
the overness of it all and then
you remember to breathe.
/ / /
25 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 35 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
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