And, new to routines, Monday evenings have brought me to a wonderful writers' circle and occasional 'open mic' recitals of poetry. Of course these things have been in Prague for the more than 21 years I've been here, but it's good to latch in now, in the glow of writing for fun and a fair fullness of life. I've already shared this poem with Jon, as it involves him, and will see how my writer peers regard it in the 'rules' of an image story: one line of launching dialogue, one immediate image, one reflection that follows, a crescendo of quick proportions, a return to the dialogue as if the middle territory hadn't happened. And so:
early
on a school day
“Hey, that redhead’s got two backpacks—wonder why.”
He was running like a pheasant
toward a bus stop we just passed,
along a curvy stream that
wouldn’t
know such traffic for a while.
Less the hurry and the baggage,
my older brother comes to mind,
waiting for his bus along the
gravel
road outside our house, while
I remain inside, too young to
travel
if old enough to watch the world
go by: a moose that wanders
through our yard, a truck
that churns our chasing dog, a
thousand clouds that spill their
guts
and raise our nearby river high.
Then my brother has to take
a rowboat for the bus that meets
him on the other side. And that
is
when I finally long to go to
school, drifting toward the
things that come to me,
filling notes and packs aplenty,
maybe turning some into
umbrellas,
smiling at the sky. Into each life
some rain…is falling now, in fact:
“wonder if he made his bus. Let’s go back to pick him up.”
See also the adjoining photo I've put on lost menagerie, which seems to show Concordia Church islanded in floodwater... Meanwhile, let's keep up our wholesome routines!
