A hundred! A hundred readers here!
I put up a “reward” in yesterday’s newsletter that I’d write a silly poem for the 100th subscriber. It’s perfect, she’s a friend from the past, a place in time where, should the evolution of Josh be measured on a geologic scale, instead of plants appearing on land, electric guitars developed six strings.
And so, since I know who she is fairly well, and we’ve had lots of good memories from way back when we were younger pals, the poem will not be silly, but the half-crystalizing something that’s been rattling around in my head for three days (or maybe ten years).
Are you in transition too, points between chapters, the blank page of what next staring back at us with only a little number of an age to remind us that we might want to figure something out?
Does springtime and Sundays come along and kick you in the knee every once in a while? The guys building my house tap out a beat that loosens thoughts, jarring questions of usefulness and productivity into the open, and the question of what are we doing?
Nobody will ever crack the mystery of a Sunday evening in April.
Here’s something in the meantime, a rummaging and rattling around, a trying to piece together.
Sunset on a Sunday
The sun set as it always does on a Sunday
Fast and heavy with a reminder it’s done this before but what have you done?
The first real night of spring when the madness floats in the air and the whippoorwill sings
I passed a ghost of myself
Standing with leather boots and black pants and a haircut to prove that he could still hit the hot licks on six strings
If only the bus would show up out of that vermillion fading fast in the west
(And the feeling he gets)
Zeppelin, man, can you dig it?
But the street remained empty as his chances
I almost forgot as I talked to strangers about lunar geology
Gathered ‘round the telescope to gaze at those echoing plains
A chance meeting of minds, fleeting, dispersed
Back onto nighttime breezes
Catching the howling of keys
A drunk, bashing out chords on the bus stop piano
That sounds like music at first
But isn’t
As it echoes off sleeping buildings that once were busy
The traffic light doesn’t turn blue, only green
With a soundless flicker
On a dark spring night
These shards slide around, shifting, shale, pressed with fossils of things I once held dear (and might still) clattering, an avalanche in my mind
Of the useless, and the sacred, the firewood and the photo album
Of a map I once knew, and nearly remembered
Before I woke up, or fell asleep
I think it told me
Where next
So I’ll see if it shows up
I’ll settle in to listen.