On The Last Night Of My 40s
On the last night of my 40s
I had dinner with my former wife
and my current sister.
French dips and Thai wings
in a 19th-century Pennsylvania tavern.
I talked with a friend about chess,
traded jokes with my son,
and listened to the crickets
sing through a gentle rain.
Tomorrow is the big day.
A half-century.
I’m not where I thought I’d be.
But I’m still here, and that counts.
/ / /
9 September 2023
State College PA
This is poem 50 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day for the 50 days leading up to my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
Category: State College
Chance Encounter
I met him in the park
where you asked me
to marry you.
I was in a camping chair
behind my van,
reading.
He was passing by
on one of the park’s
walking paths.
The rear door of my van
(the van I moved into
after you met someone else)
was open,
and the bed and stove
caught his eye as he passed.
He stopped to talk,
asking about my travels,
what I had seen
and where I had slept
and how I kept alive;
everyone’s questions.
We exchanged numbers
for some reason,
and I stopped going
to that park,
the park where you asked me
to marry you,
before you met someone else.
/ / /
28 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 38 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.
Leave a Commentback in our bagel shop
the weird baby is still here
we aren’t
/ / /
9 November 2022
State College PA
A Supermarket In Pennsylvania
I call this my supermarket period.
I’ve mostly been living
in grocery store cafes since April.
Over time you get to know the rhythms.
You recognize the regulars;
fellow drifters or room renters
or nomads or the unhoused.
I assume the workers know my face,
although I never speak to them
and they never speak to me.
I wonder what stories they might imagine
to explain those of us who are here
every day. Probably they don’t
invent a story at all, because
why would they?
We’re phantoms, passing through
the walls but somehow not
falling through the floors.
Eventually each of our
supermarket periods will end.
We’ll move on or find housing
or get arrested or die.
The hours and hours we’ve piled up
in these identical seats
will dissolve into the ether,
leaving the occasional ring
on a tabletop, soon wiped away.
/ / /
7 November 2022
State College PA
the soft triplets
of unknown insects
traffic on the road below
/ / /
9 September 2022
State College PA
gray-blanketed morning
two terriers scamper
onto the stony trail
/ / /
7 September 2022
State College PA
The Song Of A Million Insects
I stood in the yard of my former wife’s house
and told you (across an ocean) that I worry
there’s no place for me in this world.
A year later I drive by that same yard
on my way to the trailhead
where I park my minivan in lieu of a life.
A million insects are singing
as the moon flirts with an appearance
from behind the smothering clouds.
There’s another minivan in the small gravel lot.
No lights showing inside, no sound.
Two minivans and a million tiny lives.
It’s a miracle to be here at all, I guess.
I have no good answer for Mary Oliver,
so I let the question hang.
/ / /
6 September 2022
State College PA
last man standing
in the supermarket cafe
sitting, really
/ / /
5 September 2022
State College PA
Tudek Triptych
I embrace the danger
of a bench
under the oak tree
*
the quick-step rhythm
of park trail walkers
the slow march of breath
*
in the pavilion is a child
with an air horn
I scan the skies for a meteor
/ / /
27 August 2022
State College PA
my legs stay strong
because I never stop moving
not sure that’s worth it
/ / /
22 August 2022
State College PA
watching the storm
from the darkness
of the driver’s seat
/ / /
21 August 2022
State College PA
hotter than
a motherfucker
warm day, too
/ / /
3 August 2022
State College PA
Today is the 500th day of the haiku notebook project.
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