you once told me to- find my true north, thank you of course, & realistically we will never meet again, after all, it has already been over a decade, but chance encounters are most of life, then just memory, then nothing, or nothing that we know for sure, but i still appreciate you, sometimes read you, even watched a video once of you reading, describing jellyfish everywhere, unseen danger swimming all around, true, the sea, ocean, life, can be fear, but rarely here, on this page, screen, canvas, thanks again for your courage, i try to be like you.
Tag: Memory
When You Left For College
at first it feels like summer camp in september, you will be back soon, but days become weeks, become more than a month & you aren’t home
at night, sometimes i think i hear your late arrival, as if you were still a high school senior, i thought those saturday nights would go on forever, they don’t, they can’t, time waits for no one, certainly not for some middle-aged man
sad in still moments, memory is love
you the dancer, the big sister, the teacher, the basketball player, the driver, the instagram addict, the celsius drinker, the friend to many
& so i just stare at this screen & wait for thanksgiving.
Man Eats Poem
no one talks about the teeth, composite resin fillings, coffee-stained, gaps where words get stuck, flossing only helps so much, everyone thinks about the tongue, taste touching, needs to know everything, sweet, salty, bitter, wet thing in the center of mouth, hero, villain, puts the french in kissing, probes for meaning, even while chewing, the sentences survive, poem likes breaking apart, ephemeral is the point, swallow, digest, forget, oh well.
Embarrassing Moment, July 1987
Summer asphalt, I feel it against my cheek, warm with embarrassment and sun’s absorption, after toe snags into pothole and I tumble face first into the road’s crosswalk. This, while holding two Slurpees in July, neither spills, miracle of frozen blue sugar ice. Honking cars and trucks applaud, recognizing my brief journey from sky to ground, entertainment while waiting for red to turn to green. I rise slowly, take a small bow, try to grin, clutch the drinks and walk again.
The Old House: 1978-2023
this is the place
where i once lived
basement tv, saturday sugar
cereal, endless ping pong
mowing the lawn and
shooting driveway basketball hoops
sledding as a child
reading by the fireplace
blasting the beasties upstairs
on the old stereo
ice cream birthday cakes
hide and go seek
learning how to shave
and juggle bean bags
talent shows with sunglasses
and the elvis moves
staring at jumping squirrels
outside my bedroom window
a home once ours
now is no more
At McKay’s
the poetry section is a jumble of
paperbacks, anthologies, Chaucer
Elizabeth Bishop, Neruda, Donne
Dickinson, page after bent page
used books, leaning paper spines
the dead supporting each other
most of their words long forgotten
USA $29.95, once the price of wisdom
now two dollars, time erases money
and memories of Isla Negra
Amherst lilacs, and all the rest
Only These Four Words
only quiet these woods
bark green leaves, smell
of jasmine is everything
we wished for this
only ocean gray waters
sand sun toes touch
cold salt wet time
here on winter beach
only nature and words
my notebook of memories
we walked up mountain
your eyes forever sky
only everything, this air
we breathe in together
life, all of it
will go on forever
Baseball Cards
i’ve begun to hold you again
colorful cardboard portal
young men gripping bats
like no one ever ages
i used to take you for granted
trade you, shove you into
shoe boxes, stacking Tigers
and Orioles, reading statistic
after statistic, the only math
that ever made sense
now with gray hair, you are
mine again, behind plastic
i cradle delicate memory
this time around i know
nothing lasts forever
Mom Plays Evening Piano
she only played
mozart, on chickering
flat tusks, ebony
keys, her fingers
pressing sound into
air, while my
head on pillow
rested for sonata
slumber, this childhood
memory of time
gone by, as
if anything really
leaves this universe
empty spaces left
to be filled
again and again
Pet Goldfish
i suppose everyone
had a goldfish
from the pet
store or school
fair, glistening orange
in plastic bag
captured bit of
rippling nature, and
we tried to
keep it alive
with flakes and
water changes, but
after a few
months it died
and what did
we learn? how
to understand loss
that toilet flush
goodbye, what is
life? what is
death? it meant
nothing, and everything
Daniel W. Polk 