
Scenic Overlook
For some reason I have never been able to find a writing partner, someone who is not too much better than me or no worse than me, someone who writes in my style, who instinctively understands me, or at least wants to understand me. So when I have a bad day, I either put on the fake cheer on Facebook, which is acceptable to most people, or write in a vacuum to get my thoughts and feelings out, producing yet another poem to stick in a bulging notebook of unread, unpublished efforts.
So yesterday was one of those days for me and this is the result. I am taking the leap of sharing my poem here with whatever readers I have left (considering that I haven’t made my blog a priority for a long time or kept up with the people I used to follow faithfully).
SCENIC OVERLOOK
Some would say life has brought me backward.
I grew up poor in a rich town
where I had to hide my dark hair
beneath a golden hat, which only
made me feel hot and awkward.
Now I live poor in a poor town,
a place most of my old classmates
wouldn’t get caught dead in,
but at least I blend in:
another gray wisp of a cloud
on a sunless day,
another brown leaf on the ground
of a winter wood full of leafless trees
in muddy March
when spring’s new hope
feels like a crazy dream…
But I digress.
Yesterday I drove through some rich towns —
just looking —
not like an open-mouthed tourist
but like a coroner searching for clues to a death.
I examined the details as I saw them:
the handsome man with the perfect haircut
jogging on my side of the road
wearing clothes that I recognized
cost more than two week’s of my groceries,
(he forced me to the wrong side on a curve).
Then I pulled over to gaze at a view,
and to avoid the impatient BMW surging
at my back bumper, like the rough waves
against at the rocks at the beach
with the “No Trespassing” signs, whose beauty
I had to observe from afar.
But I will keep my scientist stance
because I don’t like the flavor
of bitterness.
I theorize the owners of these million dollar mansions
with empty yards would naturally
look like the jogging man because their parents
looked the same, and because beauty and wealth
go together like cut glass and cognac.
Why would hothouse plants live among weeds
that may choke them
to death?
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