An office day and then a meal with Mom,
succeeded by this trek across the bay
(with three legs), now I’m stretching to stay calm –
for after travel, there’s a cost to pay
above the fare and food, in timing’s flay.
I’ll follow with exquisite City meal –
one I don’t wish to cancel or delay.
Along with tax on vigor, there’s appeal.
No sooner am I home than I depart –
a scanty sixteen hours, half in bed,
are all I get before engagements start,
and what ensues are five days out instead
of that for which I yearn. But I won’t dread
the interruptions – they’re for love and food.
I’ll gird my mind, align my spine and head,
and gather to regain my solitude.
Today I travel home, by car to plane
to train to bus, and then a little more –
I’ll walk perhaps two blocks and I’ll obtain
the sanctuary that’s inside my door.
I’ll carry dirty clothes and the refrain
of fellowship with family, before
I settle into privacy and peace,
and let my pace for half a day decrease.
This daily poetry can’t all be great,
though I condition for integrity.
More often than a piece to celebrate,
it’s used to store minutia about me.
My current mood or some activity
I wish to recollect will float this boat.
I’m quietly enjoying victory,
implying, lest these lines appear to gloat.
I sat beside her in the restaurant,
engaging with my patience at a max
through maze of menu choosing what she’d want,
though knowing she’d complain at the attacks
of too much food or noise. The woman lacks
most hearing, and cognition’s inward-turned.
I tried but couldn’t help her to relax;
from me the pranayama won’t be learned.
The circumstance that makes this age so fine,
you say, is you can drop the social pose
and be yourself. But that’s no goal of mine.
I never could be other, and I chose
and labored to be truly seen. My line
is not achieving that, but what arose
for me is time to breathe and meditate –
a wealth of health and patience stirs of late.
With 7 C-notes, that’s how she repaid
me for 3 months of handling common bills.
But it’s been years since I engaged in trade
involving currency. To shop instills
the custom that the customer fulfills
a debt with card or smartphone. I’m too old
to want to buy black market bags or pills.
Street charity? A hundred can’t be doled…
The Wednesday visit pays a low return –
we’ve little time together, and it’s late
when I get home. I better answer yearn
to interact when we can activate
a weekend morning – cottage club’s our date
for hours playing, reading, loving time.
I cancelled Wednesday to recuperate,
and mark my homey comfort with this rhyme.
I don’t ignore the changes to my site.
I used to take on water through the brick
or on an oaken threshold. At the height
of rainy season, ants ran fast and bold
(I thought of flooded nest and swampy cold).
I didn’t want that structure to my east,
but it was built, by code and reg controlled.
It covers mud. It drains. My leaks decreased.
(I’m happily improved, if truth be told.)
We took our January birthday meal
a bay away and in a favorite place
from decades back. It still has its appeal –
though pricey, we can see each other’s face
and hear all words and greet the waiter’s grace
nostalgia-blissed. As well as normal gab
I plumbed her distant memories, to trace
old truth, while twirling pasta topped with crab.
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