the poetrysheet

whimsy, subversion, bowling

Number 457, Jan. 29, 2004

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

 

“Long ago, when I found my work beginning to master me, I put up a nest of fifty pigeonholes in my office so that with system I might get the upper hand of it; only to find, as the years passed, that I had got fifty tyrants for one.”

—Jacob Riis, The Making of an American

 
Trying to grow up

 

Dear Joey,

 

I’ve only seen fifty people the last week that looked like you. Only fifty, I say, because the week before I saw seventy-five. Could it be there are that many people that look like red-bearded, red-haired Joey F. in this city?

 

Probably not. I can’t imagine anyway. You’ve just been on my mind a lot lately. I even saw a Columbian paramilitary leader on the TV that was the spitting image of you, which made me laugh out loud, since I thought of you in your army stuff, wrecking tanks and what not. But mostly, I’ve been thinking of you and the kids and the wife, and how we haven’t seen enough of each other these last few years.

 

That’s what happens when you grow up, ey? That’s what everyone keeps telling me. People get their own lives, they keep saying. People have things to do that don’t connect anymore with the way things were twenty or so years ago.

 

It’s hard for me to accept that. Sure, I’ll give you people change, get busy, run on with kids and wives and husbands and jobs. But, hell, they get on with a lot of other stuff, too—model airplanes, painting pictures, watching TV, hiking in the woods, and finding new fishing holes.

 

What it is, maybe, is that when we grow up, it’s good enough to hold on to those snippets of good and bad things from the past. Remember the joys and the pains, because it’s no good just to remember the good stuff. And think of each other. Wish each other well, sort of like prayers, even when the other’s far away.

 

God knows I think of you often enough  and hope you get to be fine old man who hoes in the garden and sits on the beach twice a year when it’s too damn cold to chop wood.

 

I tell people I see my friends all the time, friends like you, Joey, when I close my eyes and dream of how things were and how they might be if they weren’t as perfect as they are now, or if they were a different kind of perfect altogether.

 

Stay in my dreams and keep growing up. I love you—that never stops

 

Your friend, always,

Rev. P

 

Today’s poem:

 

after the ice storm

 

tree limbs, silver on blue

part snow fog and steam

shiver in the wind

scratch the moon’s cheeks

 

send short poems, short thoughts, fictions, or nonfictions to the poetrysheet, where whimsy, subversion, and taking afternoon naps are our highest values

submit/whimsy/subversion/bowling/archive

Poetry News!/contact/subscribe

 

all material copyright poetrysheet and personally recommended press, unless otherwise arranged with the authors. for information, contact rev. patrick dobson, 1132 e. 65th st., kansas city, mo, 64131, 816-333-7303.