1997

Feelings - II

July 1997

I danced with someone at the dance

Her name is Ann

I asked her for lunch

She said yes

She was to give me her telephone number later.

I went off

Expecting to see her at the close

I was dancing with others

When she disappeared

Leaving me alone, without a telephone number, and  my feelings.

The process is important

That’s what America is about

It hasn’t turned into a messy affair.

Our strategy is to benefit from situations

New York City works at it

It brought me to her.

Change leads us there

The Supreme Court issues Brown v. Board of Education

It has to be in time and in place.

A plan is implemented

Man steps on the moon

It’s the honey that sweetened the tea.

The result declares loud and clear

Elvis Priestly sells 40 million records

It has been as real as a cloud-covered day.

Feedback lets us know

General Motors opens its Saturn Plant

It hurts, it triumphs. 

Driven

July 1997

I hear the door next door open and the weight’s effects as she steps about, to the answering machine, to the bath room, to the closet. She will not be there long; she usually isn’t. She’s always going out in her new, blue Volkswagen. It looks sturdy and efficient; it must be like the Rock of Gibraltar.  Surely it has the horsepower to speed her along as the Volkswagen spends so much time being driven.

She comes home after work-outs at the gym, swollen and red faced, sweaty and clothed-out in the latest gym fashions.  She must be struggling to keep her weight down.  I hear her moving from bedroom to bathroom. She must want to look just right; as she spends so much time being driven.

She has female friends over; I hear them talking and moving about.  There seems to be a unique energy coming from over there.  I wonder what they are saying.  They all have brightly-colored, new cars.  I suspect the friends too spend so much time being driven.

I see her coming home with a couple of videos and notice long periods of quietness, especially on Sunday afternoons and evenings – a time to stretch out and be removed from being so driven.

Where Do Birds Go to Die in Frederick County?

July 1997

Where do birds go to die in Frederick County?

There must be places, perhaps secret places – fields, meadows,

and caves full of feathers and caucuses.

They can’t just disintegrate.

I see them all around – in and between trees, on houses, on tree

tops, telephone wires and poles, clothes lines, fences, running

across the yard, flying, jumping, and moving about.

But now, a new question, looking with a new purpose, a different perspective.

I lay awake when silence ends as my bird neighbors begin their chirping.

I can hear them calling one another from perch to perch, across

the dark, still air, engaged in a communication of infinite importance to them.

Now hearing, with a new purpose, a different perspective.

And I begin to think, begin to wonder – how important it is to ask, to be able to, to want to ask, to ask, where do birds go to die in Frederick County?