Today I’m packing up my playing cards,
Trusting less to chance
Like the old man I’m becoming,
Rejecting new novels
In favor of Tolstoy,
Weeping openly on the streets,
Shutting my blind man’s ears
To the talking wristwatch,
Grieving now with certainty.
I’m saying no more foolery.
I’m writing to St. Sophia.
I know she’s the marriage
Of heart and wisdom.
I look up to her.
I know what they did to her daughters.
Some days I lie in the near field
And spread my arms. Once
Many years ago during
A lonesome winter I tried
In vain to write a poem
In her honor. I was earnest
And the thing turned out
Like a nursery rhyme
But because it was for her
I didn’t throw it away.
I still have it in a box.
There’s nothing wrong with naïveté
Though I don’t say it out loud.
Or I do, but only in the right hour
As when I’m tired and bowed
By injustices and I need
Something like the first flower
I brought home for my mother.
We are in fact that simple.
I hereby admit I know very little.
I prefer to think there’s another life to come.
Easy. Memory. Rain. Spring.
