Nineteen days and then some

I am on an extended break from my university with months ahead of me, free from just about everything but idleness: no work, no class, no plans.

I never realized how tiring nothingness can get. Days are insignificant – even weeks are depraved of their meaning. I was told that it was a big day on this coming Thursday and that I had plans – I wondered what they were and then realized my birthday, another insignificant event. Business for one day, then idleness for the rest of the spectrum of summer.

When I lay down in a lounge chair outside, or simply collapse and sprawl out on the grass or on the wooden planks of the deck, basking in sunlight, it feels like there is something to do. I then realize there really isn’t, and drift guiltily on into a nap or my thoughts.

Wayfaring will eventually start eating up some of my time, and getting on my bicycle and travelling around the lake, perhaps writing, reading, and music, too – nevertheless, there is a drone in the back of my mind at all times that speaks of lazy summers, of going into the woods for the sake of punching out old, punky and rotten trees, of weeding Japanese knotweed and watching carefully, day by day, by basil grow large enough to make it on its own in the garden. Perhaps poetry will spread its roots amidst all this fertile, tilled soiled.

Untitled #50

A slim young woman with wet hair is
sprinting down the street weaving left
and right like a deer in fright, brushing
her hair and holding tight a flailing purse
on the way to somewhere.

Now I am going somewhere, ambulating
away down the highways of Farmington to
where the sidewalk ends and the dual-lanes begin.
I imagine opening day at the Rite Aid across the street -
that plywood box with a brick facade and neon lights,
the pharmacy where “IT’S PERSONAL” -
and recall that old Rexall
was driven out of town after two hundred years
and at least two buildings.
They said they were bought out, but I know that
we all take comfort in this corporate consolidation of our world.

I keep going, on the stiff grass of median strips,
or across front lawns;
walking is far too romantic for the bike lanes.
Cars swoosh by and pretend that pedestrians
don’t exist, they say goodbye with the
cruel aftertaste of gasoline in the air.

The memory of farming persists in a sidewalk cider shop,
juxtaposed between gas stations and clanging, rattling,
roaring logging trucks HAULING ASS to be back in time for dinner.
One hundred million tons of steel on wheels.

The freedom of my walking legs is being
snatched away with each inch of auto-mobile pavement.
I hold my hands tightly to my sides and walk on,
headstrong, brace myself against the endless rapid
whooshing of air that threatens to take me with it.