long ago kisses

Friday’s setting out on the four-day journey of cover-to-cover dance with David Hinton’s “The Wilds of Poetry.” Somewhere a guitar steps in, arriving as melody magic.

I walk the long Bob Jones Trail in the autumn sunlight, knowing there isn’t a single tree that cares what I’m thinking. What I think I know. Trees being trees; tree doing tree.

Often I stumble from the living room reading/writing chair to the bathroom in the dark, perhaps the organics of too little sleep and too much coffee. Like being drunk, the sway of back and forth, no allegiance whatsoever to good behavior. Up at 2:59am, copious coffee at 4:00. Who is there to care?

My heart aches, I believe, wishing to be like that, a return to my childhood when everything was “Wow!” — the scary basement space under the barn down the street; beating out a little league bunt; shooting stars; spin the bottle; lost in the woods with my friend and my dog; flying down Lincoln Hill on my three-speed bike; all that Christmas money from two paper routes.

It’s like going in against the “Out” arrow into the Starbucks parking lot, pointed into an empty space in the upper area. Rebel rebel.

All this, these youthful companions walking the Bob Jones Trail with me – as me. Each tree noticing something passing. Like a breeze off the nearby ocean. Like a blue jay’s visit. Hanging moss. White bark.

I’m 76.