Reorientation
At the begining of every August,
when it's still hot and the leaves are still
green, I sit and watch a rite of passage.
Young people, not that I am too old,
mill about with eager faces, older
people in tow, older people we call
mom or dad. Thus with this another clock
I measure the passing of time.
It's seven A.ME(after ME) now, and that ME has changed in shape, has lost hair, gained lines on the face, tasted sorrow, despair, truimph, love and such things one has to learn in a unique crucible of time.
I write better now, but I don't see as well,for along with accuring thicker glasses I realise I have accured hesitation and a measure of cynicism. I have tricked myself into accepting more and rebelling less.
So on overhearing conversations at tables, of which classes to take, of moms discussing anxiously food and such talk and shaking of hands of strangers that comes with transitions, I invoke these older selves that were yet to see and thus were eager to yet to leap thus could leap beyond and yet to know the dos and the donts. Thus with this invocation I travel to all that I was and all that I can still become.
2002:07:29 17:30 Atlanta
Freshmen Orientation Day at Georgia Tech.
My Poems
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