Crow: Vol 10 2013
Crossing Mass at 9th
Bert Haverkate-Ens
In the folds
of her dark
green
sweater
lie hills
and valleys
of sunlight
and shadow,
each one a
new horizon
across her
form.
She walked
ahead of me,
her face
looking forward,
pale
sneakers
marking the
pavement
with
disappearing steps.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
A bunny
writer
Bert
Haverkate-Ens
I’m a pretty
good,
if mostly
unrecognized,
writer.
My intent is
to interest people
who matter
to me
to varying
degrees
with what
interests me.
I like
working with words on a page.
I try to be
clear,
except when
misdirection suits me.
may awaken
where
straightforward prose passes by.
If I’m not
going to be well known,
I might as
well have some fun.
Expect to
wonder which sense –
or nonsense
–
I mean.
Sometimes.
I point to
an empty hat.
And if you
are going to read my writing,
you might as
well enjoy yourself.
I’d like you
to recognize my voice,
and if you
find what I have to say interesting,
well,
there’s a
rabbit.
A bit of rhyme
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Bert is my
name,
writing
poems is a game
to help my
mind to remember,
and if they’re
not rotten,
and you have
forgotten,
perchance
yours will flame from an ember.
Venn Diagram
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Imagine
an immense circle of all the poems ever written,
intersected
with a smaller circle of people
inclined
to read poetry,
the
points that would represent my writing
would
be too small to be rendered
at
this scale.
But
there would still be points of mine
in
that lens shape between circle A
and
circle B.
And
then there would be an immense amount of pointless space.
Putting
it another way,
imagine
I were a market gardener.
There
would be an immense amount
of
compost,
the
unread words tossed on a heap.
But
in raising poems,
the
cost of seed and soil is remarkably low,
and
the time, well, time is another
of
those things
you
can’t take with you.
Many
might find it odd that I would write
so
many words,
the
market for the kind I write being what it is,
yet
I find curious satisfaction
in
composing thoughts
that
will be left to decompose.
You
are looking at the harvest.
And
now I imagine your wry grin,
your
non-existent self,
in
an infinite universe in which I turn out
to
be mistaken,
not
no one not reading these very words.
This
is how we all live, after all.
I,
your pointless unpublished poet,
imagined
that it was so,
the
Venn diagram and all
and
that we are
what
we are,
and
who,
and
why
not
that any of it would stop me from thinking what follows,
after
all,
and
I smiled my own wry grin,
as
I left a sack of zucchini on your doorstep
and
I walked away.
Who
but a writer uses words
like
doorstep,
anyway?
Catching words and ideas
Bert Haverkate-Ens
You can put
bowls and buckets out
to catch the
falling rain.
Add barrels
and cisterns,
but the
drops continue to fall,
which ones,
which glassful,
will you
offer for a drink?
Poetry
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Of course poetry should rhyme,
otherwise it would be prose.
But matching the sounds of words
at the ends of lines
is not the only way
to make words rhyme.
And rhythm matters, too.
And a ring of truth.
I should have left it alone
with 'poetry should rhyme.'
walktokaw.blogspot.com
Crow: Vol 9 2013
Cycling Lawrence
Bert Haverkate-Ens
People who say Kansas is flat
have not coasted down
the long, gradual incline
toward Parnell Park
with your love,
inexorably accelerating,
gravity’s wind in your face,
a long, sweeping arc to the left
and then, with a light touch on the brakes,
a shorter, sweeping arc to the right,
the rattling, wooden planks
of the Burroughs Creek bridge
as you ride across
at the end of your descent
finally slowing your speed.
People who say life is not sweet
have not sat in the sun
on the bench in front of
La Prima Tazza,
sipping an egg crème –
chocolate and soda,
cream and ice –
with your love,
the plastic owl
high across the way
staring down from
a blue and wispy white sky.
People who say life is for the young
have not peddled up New Jersey Street
on a mild, Wednesday afternoon
on the first day in February –
you need never forget -
with your love,
pausing only to look both ways at
the stop signs
before riding on.
People say tomorrow will be cold and flat and rainy,
and I will be warm and dry,
eating reheated, roasted vegetable soup
with my love
of more than twenty-seven years.
Sensical, anon.
Poor old Bert,
he has let his mind go
free and easy as pie
and pumpernickel.
But, she exclaimed,
it has no rhyme
and reason is severely
lacking.
And then a further
argument of what
poetry should be
ensued.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
Which came
first?
(the
chicken or the egg)
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Clear back in the beginning
I told you I loved you
because you loved me.
And now all these years
it’s still the same:
I still love you
because you still love me.
There’s been some better
and some worse.
We’ve counted some chickens,
but none have hatched.
There have been
quite some omelets
and some have gone
into Belgian waffle breakfasts
with toasted pecans
and real maple syrup.
As long as we can’t
solve the riddle,
I guess we should
buy another dozen eggs.
Inclination
Bert Haverkate-Ens
I root for the underdog.
I like to eat at restaurants where the owner eats.
I prefer to shop where the store is the only link in the
chain.
I’d usually rather have home-grown, home-made
and I like going places within walking distance of my home.
But I haven’t made a religion out of local and small and
such.
Since we seem to be stuck with them,
I’m glad for corporate sponsorship of the arts and letters
and other big and faraway things.
Although this college sports thing has gotten all out of
hand.
There’s the federally funded, yet elegant, pedestrian bridge
from Omaha, Nebraska crossing the Missouri River to nearly
nowhere Iowa.
And the Calder stabile in Seattle as big as a house
but still wouldn’t keep the rain off a homeless man.
And at twice the price,
I wouldn’t give back the night I stepped outside
and looked up at the moon where Neil Armstrong
was taking his multi-billion dollar steps for mankind.
Still, I won’t be taking that last trip myself -
more like a short drive to Cutter’s Smokehouse in Eudora
for some heart-stopping ribs and sweet potato fries,
while I listen to some band of rockers
who, in their prime were never big-time,
now slip-sliding on the downhill slope …
rocket my soul to the moon.
When I finally lay me down to sleep,
there will have been some sweet
that Google never found.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
Crow: Vol 8 2013
Memory: a
game
Bert Haverkate-Ens
I used to play a game with cards,
I think I called it Memory.
You laid them down
so many across
so many down
the faces turned away.
Then you turned up one
and then another.
If they matched,
you were briefly happy –
you removed the pair
from the grid -
and then you turned over
two more cards
those clueless backs
but for their random location
in the universe
which was all you had to go by –
and your memory.
Perhaps this is the game I am playing with myself
when I walk to the river.
It is infinitely more complex and subtle.
I turn over a card
and then my unconscious self
does so in turn.
If that is indeed who I am playing with.
What an idea:
out of all of the matter
and all of the energy
in the known and unknown universe
there should be a cohesive collection
of matter and energy that is me?
I, who used to live with a man who
talked at length
about what he termed
the subject-object problem.
This was in the Grand Street Hotel –
that is what we called our upstairs apartment,
the apartment on the second floor
of a two-story white house
on the corner of Grand Street
and –
now I’ve forgotten the cross street.
The living room walls were pale green,
I think, and the bottoms of the windows
came about to our knees.
I remember the time –
it was a party –
and he was picking up empties.
At a certain point he cradled in is arms
about as many as he could hold,
and when he reached down
to pick up another bottle,
one fell from the collection in his grasp.
This went on with a haphazardness
and a gracefulness
that seemed accidental for a time
and then contrived.
But no one –
not even he –
seemed to know when he had slipped from one mode
to the other.
And so the sky is reflected in the water,
and for an instant I see in my memory
a time millions of years ago
when that pattern had been turned up before
and I am happy
and I set these two cards aside.
There are patterns that we recognize,
after all.
I am the subject,
the objects like grains of sand on the bar -
the river will rise and flip them
all face down
again when the rains come.
It is not clear to me that this is the problem
he spoke of all those years ago.
It seems that I have walked this way before,
and of course I have,
but I mean something else …
how far back does memory go?
and another bottle tumbled to the floor,
the carpeting hideous –
but soft.
And we laughed.
And we
laughed.
And
we laughed.
After a long pause,
I stepped onto the Kaw River Bridge
and the sky was reflected in the river,
and I wept.
I play a game I call Memory.
I keep picking up the empties,
the faces turned toward the earth.
I am mostly clueless,
but I think, maybe,
I’ve seen the sun before,
reflecting on a river,
on a planet, the third one out
from that star
they say is but one
of billions.
I can remember the location
but I’ve forgotten what.
Yet for an instant
my arms are full
and I bend to pick up
another bottle.
And the river rises.
in the place I thought it would be.
And we lived for a moment
in the Grand Street Hotel.
Fragmented
Associations
Bert Haverkate-Ens
One word follows another like ducklings and chickens scatter
when feed is cast the iron if struck rings the bull bellows in the barnyards of
neighing horses and inching worms their winding way to candled yolks without
stormy flame or plenty of ice will flow or bloom but never amount to a steel
hoe our lot of anything finished.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
Crow: Vol 7 2013
Remarking
on faces on Mass Street
Bert Haverkate-Ens
This has been said before
but I frequently see remarkable faces.
Yet I feel it bears repeating.
Two such faces just walked by the bench where I sit.
I’m afraid I don’t have the ability
to do justice to all these faces.
Earlier, there was this astonishingly beautiful face of a
young woman,
the wind cunningly blowing wisps
of her straight dark hair
across her face as she tried to talk
on her phone.
But hers is not the face
I would have you focus on –
it will be easily noticed without my help.
There was an older man sitting on a bench farther down the
street,
a soft smile, the sun on his pale scalp,
only wisps remaining…
But oh, there are so many other remarkable faces, but never
mind.
There’s no use my writing yet more words that will likely be
overlooked.
See these remarkable faces for yourself,
if you will.
This round-face boy with a sippy cup just stumbled by
in the company of two more
remarkable faces.
I will probably only have this
one chance to see them.
Bert Haverkate-Ens
As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with only one wife,
as far as I know,
each wife had two Corgies,
as far as I know.
The man had silver in his
well-trimmed beard,
but he flipped his shell over his head,
walked it to the river,
and turned it back into the water.
He rowed away, gently, downstream.
Then as I was returning from St. Ives,
he was pulling on his oars,
pulling upstream with
his arms and shoulders,
his back and legs,
his mind -
as he approached a blinding patch of early morning reflected
sunlight,
halfway across the smooth
surface of the river,
I raised my hand;
then with the faint splash of one oar,
he vanished into a blaze of glory,
never to be seen by mere mortal men again.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
Recollecting Faces
Bert Haverkate-Ens
When I walk, I see people.
Their gait from a distance.
Their glancing look past me.
The fraction-of-a second smile of a stranger
when sometimes our eyes meet.
In the future I will wear a camera implanted behind my left eye.
Facial recognition software will lock on to each face -
the pretty, the weathered, the happy, the disengaged.
With a blink I will register emotion, personality.
Perhaps I will capture an image of their soul.
But for now when I see people,
their faces pass by,
the toothpick in their mouth fading with each step,
the curve of their cheek blurs,
the upturned crease at the corner of an eye
is not etched, only echoes, in my memory.
I do not wish to meet all the people I see,
but I would like to remember them,
and if I could, I would carry some of their passing looks
in my pocket,
and when the sidewalk emptied
I would sit on the bench by the river
and thumb through the pictures of the lives
who had brushed past mine
and wonder just what they were thinking
at that particular moment.
Life at the Kansas Relays
Bert Haverkate-Ens
If I tried to tell you she had an exquisite face,
I could only fail.
It was perfect like a pearl.
It was young like the dew at sunrise.
It was animated like the brook just burbling from the
glistening snow bank at midday.
It was smooth like Mary’s Lake at dusk.
Her eyes were her eyes.
Her every feature and line were hers.
And then she half-turned towards me.
And then she was laughing and waving at the jumbotron.
Her face,
there,
next to this much older, puffy, red-faced ogre.
If I were her grandfather,
I might have reached out my hand and touched her mocha
cheek.
I might have asked her how her race had gone.
And then, like a fawn, she skipped away.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
Crow: Vol 6 2013
Softly and
tenderly
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Venus was rising
when I saw a young man running
on the Central track.
As I approached I saw he had as many years
as I do.
He admitted the craziness
of staying young forever,
but he was looking at Venus
when he said it,
and we talked of the dying crescent moon,
still holding on at several billion.
I headed for the river,
at a walk,
I’m feeling my years,
and that I’m just getting started,
Venus still rising over my right shoulder.
As I approached the Gazebo,
I saw a man rise,
to a sitting position.
It appeared that he has my age,
but perhaps he was as old as Jesus,
if he had indeed been resurrected from the dead,
and had kept himself in really good shape,
by running early every morning.
But he looked around,
and seeing no one who wanted his help,
he laid his head down by his boots,
and Jesus slept.
I stopped for a swallow of water
at a fountain on Mass,
then washed my face
in a sprinkler popped-up
in a flower bed.
I tested the new bench
in the doorway of Minsky’s Pizza.
The acoustics were good.
Softly and tenderly,
Jesus is calling …
I still hear my mother calling
and she’s been gone
as far as I know,
for some time,
so while forever might be crazy,
I don’t know what the white-haired man
thought after he heard,
ye who are weary,
come home …
shortly before he saw someone
my age sitting on
the bench, tucked away,
echoes still bouncing off
the brown brick walls.
I passed him shortly thereafter,
farther up the street,
he has a few more years on me.
Venus was still rising,
but fading into the brightening sky,
I don’t understand what this all means,
but I’m approaching the river -
I have faith that the sun will be rising soon,
a commonplace,
but no less improbable
that I should be here to see it.
As always and nearly forever,
in the limited perspective
I carry with me,
the sky is reflected in the river,
such a wreck of a river,
the Kaw,
it’s so filled with farmland,
I wouldn’t be surprised to see
Jesus walking on the water,
even at his age.
I paused,
not to quench my thirst,
at the fountain by the levee,
but for a taste.
And as I recrossed the bridge
and headed home,
the sun rose again.
It’ll be a hundred degrees,
before long.
I saw the guy who reminded me of Jesus
walking on the other side of Mass Street;
he too had risen again,
and was wearing his yellow work boots,
walking on concrete.
And then I saw the young man,
my age,
peddling off to work.
Softly and tenderly
I opened the back door;
the sinner’s come home.
The cowgirl
and the dude
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Across the street strode the young,
blazing blond, cowgirl.
I couldn’t help noticing
her long, strong, prairie-burned, legs
above the tops of her scuffled boots
and below the fringe of her jean cutoffs.
billowed in the Kansas wind
over a white T.
Git along, little doggies –
her cattle were nowhere in sight,
but I am certain she caught up with them
after she vanished
from my sun-shot squint.
Will
Bert Haverkate-Ens
I know a kid who skates the long board;
he’s so cool that if you don’t look carefully
you’ll miss the finger flick of acknowledgement,
or perhaps he makes no sign at all,
his eyes already a half-block ahead,
searching for the next concrete wave.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
Crow: Vol 5 2013
Repetition
Bert Haverkate-Ens
I have come to the age when I repeat myself.
Let me try that again: I have come to the age when I realize
that I repeat myself.
No, I must try that one more time: I have come to the age
when I realize that I am repeating someone else.
I am not making any of this up.
That would be blasphemy, or maybe merely plagiarism.
I was standing on the Kaw River Bridge.
I heard the train a comin’ –
a rollin’ round the bend.
And then, through the leaves of a tree, at something like
more than a 100 yards away, I saw that beveled, blocky orange Burlington
Northern and Santa Fe locomotive appear, rounding that last bit of bend and
begin to bear down on me, toward a spot well beneath my feet, to be precise.
For long, glorious seconds it powered right at me, getting larger, and larger,
and then it was just one container car after the next for an age in train years
until the tracks were empty.
Mr. Cash said part of that, so memorably, so long ago, in my
years.
But as I was saying, it is the words of others that I am
writing.
Someone said it sooner. Someone said it more memorably.
Ah, there’s the crack in the universe.
So you don’t forget, language goes back a long time, beyond
the tower of Babel, beyond the first writing, beyond the first word. I’ll not
elaborate, but reputable sources trace all things back something like 15
billion years.
I frankly cannot imagine who could have made some
singularity - some call it that - containing so astronomically much potential -
ex nihilo, as some say.
But then how?
Why?
But I will not now elaborate on that much repeated and
disputed tale.
I am interested in the blink between the moment of my birth
and the inexorably approaching moment when my eyes will never open upon this
earth again.
There has been some expansion in the universe since the Big
Bang, some expansion in language since the first word, but Ecclesiastes said it
memorably, so very long ago in cultural years: there is nothing new under the
sun.
Without going back over a lot of thinking and writing that
has gone on, in my own time, the time I am interested in at this moment, I seem
to be writing in a time of repetition.
Surely, I put words and phrases in different orders, and at
the pace we read and listen we may not realize that we’ve read and heard this
all before.
That’s the crack.
Our memory.
So, I am not playing on saying something new, something
never said before. Only something you’ve never heard before.
I aim to play a note so sweet that it will ring in your
memory for perhaps as long - and maybe longer - as it took for me to hear that
whistle out well beyond my sight and then I waited, waited for that train to come
round that bend. And then I felt what I felt. And I wished I could put it into
words.
Maybe one day, with practice, I will repeat someone’s words,
maybe some I have echoed myself, having long forgotten the source, so memorably
that you will walk out on that bridge and wait – to discover if they are true.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
Writing nonsense in my head
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Ran into Starbucks.
A silver dollar
for an unlined sheet of paper
and a number 2 pencil.
My cache is full.
Words,
whole lines
are spilling over
into the cracks of the sidewalk.
A half-polished thought
slipped through my circuits
and rolled into the storm drain.
Coffee can wait.
I’m losing my mind faster
than I can cram
new ideas into the leaks.
Should have bought
that smartphone
before pens
became scarcer
than swords.
We have poetry
Bert Haverkate-Ens
We will not be friends.
Our childhoods were too far apart.
An afternoon over a cup of coffee
we never shared.
We will not meet, nor shall we hug.
But I have read your words,
and I have come to know something
about how you feel about the world,
and I have begun to care
about what you have to say.
So there is something between us,
if not quite friendship.
Write soon.
Crow: Vol 4 2013
South Park sunset
Bert Haverkate-Ens
The bare black branches
do not keep pace
as I walk along the street.
The closer to me,
the faster.
The nearer the horizon,
they slow and appear about to turn
and watch what I am looking at.
Through this irregular moving
fireplace screen,
a spherical fire hardly moving
to my naked eye
reflects on the undersides
of dull gray clouds,
glowing as sweet as fresh squeezed
orange juice.
But I cannot pause, I have carrots
and potatoes to cut for a stew,
and this man cannot live by astonishment alone.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
A second look
The bare black branches do not keep pace as I walk along the
street. The closer to me, the faster. The nearer the horizon, they appear about
to turn and watch what I am looking at. Through this irregular moving fireplace
screen, a spherical fire hardly moving to my naked eye reflects on the
undersides of dull gray clouds, glowing as sweet as fresh squeezed orange
juice. But I cannot pause, I have carrots and potatoes to cut for a stew, and
this man cannot live by astonishment alone.
Clarity
Bert Haverkate-Ens
I want to learn to look out warm windows
and watch the last leaves holding on
as the north wind tugs.
And when the needle completes
its final spiral
and tick
tick
ticks
the endless silent circle,
I will hear music through my eyes.
And then, when
no leaves are left
I will take
a cold, bitter sip
from my cup
and settle in
to hear
the first,
white
flake
of winter
fall.
Nectarines
Bert Haverkate-Ens
I buy nectarines sometimes.
Their skins are red and yellow
and smooth.
Their shapes are round
and plump.
I put them in a bag for several days.
Then I wash one.
I slice it into quarters,
discarding the pit.
I bite into the flesh.
It is sweet and firm
and tender and juicy
and nutritious
and fruity -
next to a lump of coal.
But I had a nectarine,
once.
If I could I would take you to that tree,
it grew in earth near Fresno,
California, in an orchard.
The memory lingers
in my imagination,
but the nectarines were
on the trees.
There was more red in their skins.
They were no rounder
but their plumpness approached
that of the size of grapefruits.
I do not remember washing them.
I do not remember slicing them
into quarters.
I do remember sweet nectariness
in my mouth.
I do remember juicy goodness
running down
my chin and fingers.
They say perfection does not exist,
and even goodness is fleeting.
But I don’t care about all that.
I have tasted what I have tasted,
and I want more.
I will accept lesser goodness
than I have known,
and I will try to savor and celebrate
what is sweet
and somewhat nectariny.
But if I could,
I would take you to the tree,
and we would walk
hand in hand,
and step by giddy, solemn step,
and grasp on earth
as it was imagined in heaven.
And the ants would lick
the juice
from our plump
and sleeping faces
as we rested,
beneath the tree of life,
satisfied,
in the dying
sun.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
Crow: Vol 3 2013
Allegretto
vivace
Bert Haverkate-Ens
I heard music in the young checkout woman’s voice.
Where did that come from?
Who did she take lessons from
when she was a child?
Perhaps she practiced thirty minutes
every afternoon after school.
Or is she simply a natural talent?
Of course, she is still young.
Now I can manage some cautious cheerfulness
when I’m walking along in the sunshine
and my feet don’t hurt.
But her voice still lilts,
standing hour after hour,
that incessant beep, beeping
in her ears,
in front of an often unappreciative audience.
It would be inappropriate of me to give her
a standing ovation.
I can only wish, someday,
that she gets the chance to sing
the songs she loves.
Not that I don’t quite selfishly
hope that her talent goes undiscovered
as she checks my few groceries
and brightens my day.
But maybe it could be as they say
that an old dog could learn
to at least carry a tune
from this mistress of mirth.
After all, I am likely to face
my own versions of hard times,
eventually, somewhere down this road,
and it might be better to go singing,
even when I’ll have to wonder why.
I listen to the music in this young
checkout woman’s voice,
and instead of grumbling how long
I had to wait,
or how much my feet ache,
I practice lifting the corners of my mouth
in gratitude for her lively melody.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
Something a
little funny about race
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Three black girls
sat in a corner
of Central Field.
An old white male
watched them
from across the way.
Presumptions are made
all the time
based on the color of skin,
of age, of gender.
It’s simpler that way.
Several years ago
these girls would have learned
how to add their ages together
and would still find that their total is
less than my single sum.
But are we equal to?
My people,
I presume those generations long gone
to be mine,
they came to this part of the world
some years well after
their people - more presumptions made -
were freed in this country’s
Civil War,
skirmishes for their freedom
breaking out from time to time
to this very day.
So many simplifications
in telling the tales.
Their people.
My people.
People of my skin color
and my gender,
were mindlessly and
maliciously
raping and lynching
those people of darker hues -
so long ago by these girls lives,
yet so very near the time of my own birth
in this land of the not yet fully free.
All this matters,
the math and the history,
but today I care about something else.
These school girls must have seen me coming
and I hope their merry laughter
is of a simple sort,
and I smile at what I presume
young girls might find that is funny
in a ruddy face and aging gait.
If only we each get our turn.
And then they rose,
their kinky black hair,
their skinny-jeaned legs
like scissors in harmony,
and the three girls scampered up the hill
and vanished behind the school house doors.
I presumed they were my people,
from the way they giggled.
Why wouldn’t I?
It’s better that way.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
Crow: Vol 2 2013
Behind my
eyes
Bert Haverkate-Ens
When I was a child
and I had just lived
a nearly perfect day,
I didn’t want to go to bed
because I didn’t understand
that tomorrow would be another day.
Now that I have grown up
a little, I finally welcome sleep
at the end of such nearly perfect days
because I realize that tomorrow
will come soon
and I will be refreshed to live it all over again.
And yet there was a moment last night
behind my laughing eyes
when I was sitting in your living room –
I will not tell you of all the beautiful faces
that I saw –
and I wept a little when no children
where looking because I knew that they
are more right about tomorrow than I am.
Those burnt orange walls –
only just those walls –
will never be exactly in this light
ever again as they were
in that very nearly perfect moment.
The light from Maya’s eyes,
and his and hers,
will change even the color of the walls.
Of course she will not notice that
for many years.
And then we all smiled
and we embraced like grown ups
stepping into the night,
Alia skipping, not sure
if she was coming
or going
in her down coat and bare feet,
up and down the steps
between us,
and after all we do so long
to sleep and be refreshed
because tomorrow we will all be
more beautiful than today.
A child must learn to see in time.
Behind my eyes I can still very nearly see you as you were
then,
and then, each light and shadowed moment,
going back to the day you were a bit of light,
all those moments coming along with you,
and so each day you must awaken
more beautiful in ways that
could perhaps only be glimpsed
from behind my eyes.
How all those moments could be
the same you -
you – as you are,
climbing the stairs to your bed,
you will have to ask
someone older than me.
But now I am becoming a child again
and I want this growing older never to end.
The sun will not every morning be
more beautiful
forever, and every day I will not be there
to see you
become more beautiful until
you also have your oldest day.
And so I pretend I need to get a drink of water
because behind my eyes I find
I am still filled with
the drink and the food,
the faces and the laughter,
and the children.
Tears of joy, bebito,
you will taste their salt,
if only you will now go to sleep
for a few inconsequential moments
and tomorrow will be just like this
and you will wake up refreshed
and ready to play.
There was just the right amount
of sour with the sweet
in that cake,
very nearly perfectly moist with the crumb
holding to the fork.
I like the crunch of the toasted almonds,
and olive oil, you said.
We should do this again soon,
but the children learn –
they will learn that it will never be
exactly like this again,
an no matter how old they grow,
they will never understand why
it should not be so.
Amor, sleep, your eyes must rest.
Mañana will be waiting for you in the morning.
Trust me, there will be more moments like this one,
you will see them from behind your eyes.
But there is only the tiniest slice of cake left on the
plate,
and even the last bite will not sit
on this red napkin for long.
So time to refresh your eyes and then
open them again,
and you will see that it will be
even more beautiful
as you add to tomorrow
what you will carry along
from how it was today and yesterday
and so many days, and all those days
and little one,
tomorrow you will change the color of the sky.
And I must also go back to bed,
I want to be refreshed
and see the light behind your eyes.
And maybe there will be cake, We’ll see.
You couldn’t imagine
that it might be more beautiful,
but you’ll see that’s possible too.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
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