1.
Ah, California,
with your paved-path
wilderness a mile
down the road
from Peets,
this morning I got on
the merry-go-round,
joined the parade:
joggers, walkers,
skaters, bikers,
people with dogs and babies,
talkers on the phone,
perfume of sunscreen,
masses of walkers
with walkmen
even two people
with faces deep
in books, whose feet
somehow kept finding
the next step.
2.
Something’s changed
since I last came here
fifteen years ago,
when I tried to greet
each person who went by,
crossing at times
some microscopic
line into flirtation
and judging savagely
the ones who would not respond
with a wave or a word
or a friendly look.
Now a married man
and more secure
in my domestic world,
my soul is content to swim
within the reservoir
of my own solitude.
And if my glance
is not returned,
all right.
Halfway around
The lake I greet
A couple I know
walking their dog.
The husband can’t shake hands,
he holds the leash in one of his,
a cup of Starbucks in the other.
3.
When someone passes me—
in this case not a jogger, even,
just a guy with longer strides—
there’s still the same
chagrin and shame
I always felt, in spite
of knowing what
I should have felt.
Vestigial instinct leaves me with
the sense I’ve lost a race.
But now I notice that a man
who’s been in front of me
the whole way, who jogs awhile,
then walks, then jogs, has stopped
and left the path to pee.
I pass him with a surge of childish glee,
like a miler ‘cross a finish line.
How strange it is, the human mind.
4.
Finished with my
two point seven
miles, I sit
upon a bench and write,
watching the strollers
come and go,
figures for a modern
“Sunday in the Park with George.”
The geese honk, water ripples,
and the breeze blows gently
on my cheek.
Down on the concrete bank
four unkempt, red-beaked vultures
strut almost too ironically,
as if to say, “This too shall pass! ”
Reminded of passing time, I glance
over at the parking meter by my car
whose blotch of red tells me that indeed it has!
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