Here’s a quirky bit of a poem. Or maybe it’s the precursor to one. I found it along the miles and miles yesterday, and it came to roost while I sat quietly this morning.
Eighteen Hours of Watching
There’s something about a morning, not early, for the watcher who was up late.
Greeting the 8:30 chime and quiet tick of an antique clock
With blueberries on the counter and eggs gently knocking against the boiling pot
And there’s something about spring
I saw it yesterday
Deepening shade in the forgotten wayside
Somewhere by some county line
And the new green leaves
that I saw
Later–
A stone’s throw from the wall of traffic
It, well
nearly killed me, in some lost place inside, hidden by decades of piles of
Account Statements
But a hurt, even feeble and faint and distant is a cry of life and a I’m still here
There’s a hedge of forsythias burning by the next county line (I forgot where, but I’ll never forget that yellow) that blazes eternally ever since I saw the glow in the bushes by the sidewalk as a boy
A piece of my yard following me like the moon used to follow me home
One tiny flower strives on a cutting rooting in an old plastic water bottle
I got it from Grandma’s yard last fall
I don’t know why I must plant it
I don’t know why I’d like to tell you about all the forsythia I’ve ever seen, and maybe you’d have stories of dogwoods or picnics or the smell of a carnival in late September, and neither of us would care
But we would still know it’s important somehow, that thing we can’t put our grubby account statements on
Because there’s something about a quiet morning when I realize the World
and something about Spring.
–Josh
P.S. I listened to O’Connor’s The River in the dark somewhere south of Charlottesville yesterday on her 100th birthday.
Good grief.