if anybody asks
I tell them that each month
I add one minute of meditating
to my days, accumulating silence
like pennies in a jar
until the day I’m
speech less
spirit full
Month: June 2019
The Day He Couldn’t Write
he tried to remember 1986, the 7-11 with
rolling hot dogs glistening on metal
smell of slurpee sugar, spoon straws
filled with red frozen slush, playboy magazines
covered, cloistered in the corner
laffy taffy, baseball cards in wax wrappers
but then he forgot why it mattered, and moved on
to dancing, prancing, using words like dazzle and
bob dylan, but it still wouldn’t happen
wouldn’t congeal into anything
just looking for truth, he thought
looking is the problem, let them find you
play hard to get, but sometimes that just means
you are alone, like a rolling stone
a complete unknown, a themeless writer
who couldn’t make it happen
not today
Long Distance Relationship
never thought you
knew how separate
lives can’t be
together when apart
only to remember
the always ending
after it’s over
this long distance
Who Was Judd Nelson?
St. Elmo’s Fire, now obscure
80’s movie, song, stuck in my head
I imagine myself ninety two
like my grandmother once was
humming lyrics, words
Bye Bye Blackbird
in a room full of people
with blank faces
Judd Nelson long forgotten
Walking to the Potomac River
that trickling water
goes somewhere, pushes
between smooth stones
decaying leaves
undulating stream
funnels through
all things but sun
that gravity exists
in memory moments
summer creek, wet feet
balancing on wobbly islands
holding boyhood time
until runnel becomes river
rushes away
Daniel W. Polk 