Scenes From An Evening
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 12:26 pm
Scenes From An Evening
Walking the dogs,
I asked if you’d ever gone jogging with them,
And you said you had once or twice.
I took your pit bull
And ran down the street
Into the fathomless distance;
Cool nighttime impulses;
You said jogging was hard with a purse,
And I said so was jogging in work boots—
Musing over high school affairs and episodes,
Jogging the memories,
A drop of rain kissed my forehead;
Things that happened in the morning,
Things that happened in the afternoon,
Years past;
Things that happened those days,
Things we spoke of tonight;
Another drop of rain
Kissed my forehead again—
Your sister, your brothers,
Old family photographs
Carefully disarrayed
In an old hat box;
Some friends
That were like brothers and sisters,
And old pets that were like
New motives to beam with delight—
Some suffer unhealthy hardships,
Some just get old,
Some get put down out of compassion,
Some just expire pitifully;
To die beneath my favorite tree in the summer,
If I ever belonged to you—
I experienced the new adventure
Of eating your kind of food
And spoke in the voices of movies,
Suggesting that perhaps I shouldn’t attempt
To speak of scientific matters
Or things I’m knowledgeable about—
You dropped a penny
On your way out of the store.
I picked it up and asked
If you wanted it back,
But you told me it was good luck.
When I said it landed face-down
You told me to drop it again,
On account of a face-down penny
Being bad luck.
So I put it in my pocket
And claimed that I liked to
Live dangerously—
Maybe next week,
If I haven’t intruded enough,
I thought,
And forgot to straighten out the steering wheel,
And when the brake was let up
The bumper smooched the curb
And I sang songs to myself
All the way home,
Forgetting that I
Was thinking of you
This morning
When I almost
Got myself
Into an accident
On the way to work.
I made sure to count:
986 smiles—899 showing teeth,
812 accompanied by laughter;
56 raised eyebrows;
21 faces of wonder, 30 faces of surprise,
17 faces dancing, 28 faces of incredulity;
3 solemn looks of longing,
4 solemn looks of despair;
64 eyeballs turning away,
488 eyeballs connecting;
1 wandering hand beneath the passenger seat
That was met with a bizarre substance;
79 moments of internal questions,
15 moments of answers;
10,000 times I’ve told myself
That perhaps I’ve inflated the numbers,
But I’m sure that my math is correct,
And I must be doing something right.
Walking the dogs,
I asked if you’d ever gone jogging with them,
And you said you had once or twice.
I took your pit bull
And ran down the street
Into the fathomless distance;
Cool nighttime impulses;
You said jogging was hard with a purse,
And I said so was jogging in work boots—
Musing over high school affairs and episodes,
Jogging the memories,
A drop of rain kissed my forehead;
Things that happened in the morning,
Things that happened in the afternoon,
Years past;
Things that happened those days,
Things we spoke of tonight;
Another drop of rain
Kissed my forehead again—
Your sister, your brothers,
Old family photographs
Carefully disarrayed
In an old hat box;
Some friends
That were like brothers and sisters,
And old pets that were like
New motives to beam with delight—
Some suffer unhealthy hardships,
Some just get old,
Some get put down out of compassion,
Some just expire pitifully;
To die beneath my favorite tree in the summer,
If I ever belonged to you—
I experienced the new adventure
Of eating your kind of food
And spoke in the voices of movies,
Suggesting that perhaps I shouldn’t attempt
To speak of scientific matters
Or things I’m knowledgeable about—
You dropped a penny
On your way out of the store.
I picked it up and asked
If you wanted it back,
But you told me it was good luck.
When I said it landed face-down
You told me to drop it again,
On account of a face-down penny
Being bad luck.
So I put it in my pocket
And claimed that I liked to
Live dangerously—
Maybe next week,
If I haven’t intruded enough,
I thought,
And forgot to straighten out the steering wheel,
And when the brake was let up
The bumper smooched the curb
And I sang songs to myself
All the way home,
Forgetting that I
Was thinking of you
This morning
When I almost
Got myself
Into an accident
On the way to work.
I made sure to count:
986 smiles—899 showing teeth,
812 accompanied by laughter;
56 raised eyebrows;
21 faces of wonder, 30 faces of surprise,
17 faces dancing, 28 faces of incredulity;
3 solemn looks of longing,
4 solemn looks of despair;
64 eyeballs turning away,
488 eyeballs connecting;
1 wandering hand beneath the passenger seat
That was met with a bizarre substance;
79 moments of internal questions,
15 moments of answers;
10,000 times I’ve told myself
That perhaps I’ve inflated the numbers,
But I’m sure that my math is correct,
And I must be doing something right.