Long Time Ago Tomorrow

                      The important thing to remember is

                      that I’m probably going to forget . . .

​

 

Now when I say, “just the other day,”

                                                             it might mean 

last week, or 20 years ago . . .  

                                                   After a month of abstinence, 

I sit down with a glass of wine and

                                                          hardly a minute passes 

before I’m just happy 

                                    to be here, 

                                                       among bare liquidambars,

feeling some small satisfaction

                                                  to have not lost all my hair,

forgetting the time-lapse relation 

                                                      of high-tech gizmos 

and my hapless heart,

                                    those bits keeping me vertical 

on the planet.

                         What were the odds I’d last this long? 

I raise my glass to

                               clinical researches, cardiological wizards,

titanium miners everywhere, 

                                                  and of course the makers of 

fine pinot noir!

                            I float back to days when ligaments and bones, 

(not to say synapses) were limber, 

                                                          well-oiled and working 

like nobody’s business

                                      as I raced around the schoolyard

or sat in my desk raising

                                         an exuberant hand to proclaim

the invisible

                      “You understood” as subject for the blank 

in the diagram on the chalkboard.

                                                       Not long thereafter, 

working 2 jobs at once,

                                        50 still looked like a land far beyond

the sea 

              until one day I washed up on that defeated shore . . .

which was, by most accounts, middle-age?

 

*           *           *

​

These days, no one tells me

                                              I’m an “old soul” as we used to say

in the ‘60s to ingratiate ourselves, to sound mystical and hip.

But if someone did, 

                                  they wouldn’t be far off 

                                                                           the mark now —

no reincarnation or mysterious agencies required.

                                                                                      Any secrets

back there linger in a boy’s sea-grey uniform shirt, 

                                                                                      and each time 

I catch myself daydreaming

                                                I find I have less to bring to the table

insofar as hope obtains, given the sea water 

                                                                           in my veins, and 

the dead making their way back in dreams—

                                                                            my compadre reading 

from pages yellowed as the moon, 

                                                          not so much warning or advice 

in his voice 

                    as an old-world relic of affection, 

                                                                             insofar as anyone 

can hold on to any part of that 

                                                      wrestling the spindrift of time . . .

in which I never find myself

                                                in a white dinner jacket 

meeting Ilsa Lund in the shadows 

                                                          of the casino 

after counting up the take . . .

                                                   though I do recall a world of 

black & white, an orchestra playing “Perfidia” 

                                                                             in the dancefloor 

flashback to Paris

                               before I drift to an afternoon in fall 

at a table in my pal’s back yard, 

                                                      or a small café on Olive Street 

with coffee . . .

                    I drop a cube of sugar into each of our cups,

a small cloud of cream 

                                       where memory might hold when I wake, 

an emblem, road sign, some refuge

                                                            to ascribe meaning to 

this side of the sky— 

                                    though now, sitting in the dusk, 

                                                                                           it comes 

to little more than light dissolving in a scrum of clouds,

sauntering off to who-knows-where . . .

                                                                   a last drift of affection, 

as I think I said . . . .

​

 

 

At the Bus Station in Fresno

​

Deep into fall, 

and I’ve done little 

more than sit here

all morning among 

the wet leaves

plastered on the sidewalk,

some smoke going up

in the west. 

                    An hour ago, 

someone I almost recognized, 

stepped out of the gray 

air and into a taxi headed 

up to the Tower District,

and left me thinking 

of my compadre 

of youth and middle age, 

gone 5 years now

from these streets, and 

who, despite the fierce 

mercies of his poems,

has not returned

in the burnished 

October light 

spiking through dreams

and the Chinese elms

of East Brown. 

No up-dates or information 

is available beyond 

the rust of civic lawns,

the dying radiance

of roses—a line of clouds 

drifting by without one clause

in the conditional tense

that has me thinking

of the afterlife for a while, 

but seeing nothing

that even approximates 

a basket of sweet by-and-bys 

left by the cat’s dish

on the porch . . . 

 

Nothing for it 

but to be grateful 

for 40-some years, 

for bus fare and

a paper cup of tea

in my hands, 

the time to waste

sitting here with the dust 

on Tulare Street 

where bus drivers 

are as taken with

an ice-white, midday

moon as mystics—

both staring out to 

the same end . . .  

 

Pushing and lifting,

hand-over-hand

all those years,  

I’m at a loss 

to say what’s left 

to do, where 

I’m headed now?  

Houses I knew 

are empty as fields 

in Firebaugh, Fowler, 

or Madera, and 

I almost feel I know 

these workers, 

these pobrecitos who, 

though not nearly my age 

are not all that young, 

who are also waiting 

quietly with a suitcase 

or sun-rotted gym bag, 

one with a sandwich 

in a paper sack —

its grease stain the only spot 

of hope for miles . . . .