September Twenty-Eighth

Today is the first faultless morning of fall,
cool and keen enough to carry a sweater,
and I, though nearsighted, came naturally to know,
without warning, how much I’d wished for this,
how wantonly I’d been waiting.
While I grasped and grappled the ground
brisk breezes braced my back
and held my hair, hovering,
and senses in my legs sent surges
to suck at my soul.
It startled and stunned my stomach
and hollowed holes in my heart
with shrill shots of sugar,
opening my exhausted eyes
to the energy of the earth.
The width of my windowed gaze widened,
my breaths became more broad
and firmer, fairer, more fulfilling—
how long it’s been since my lungs last
drank light, unleaded air!
Clean, unclouded wind cleared out
the over-used and yellowed air of yesterday
that prodded and pressed us, not protesting:
dead, destructive dew
that daily desecrated summer.
Raw and radiantly I remember,
fast, with a force that fills
nerves, neurons, nematodes,
that I can do any action—
how could I forget this axiom?
How could I, in cold caution,
for a whole hot and heady summer
have lain listless and lifeless
under the overlaid artifice
and the asymmetrical illusion of weakness?

Post-Graduate

Every moment, I am more aware
of a sense of impending finality;
time is running out,
and the meat and the milk
will go bad if they are not eaten.
My peers are out of sight,
and even children surpass me,
while I stand here,
incapable of motion upwards or forwards.
I am neither climbing
nor expanding in breadth--
I may as well be in an upright grave.
I do not generate wealth enough
to finance my own existence.

Self-Portraits

Broken clocks,
doors that no longer turn on their hinges,
globes that do not spin

and in the classroom,
the children get older and
they have more discerning minds
and less discerning eyes,

but the desks,
the chairs,
the books never change,
while the chalk breaks down
smaller, smaller
into dust and is wiped away with rags.