SHADOWING TIME
Since dawn on this island,
I've watched the sands shift
on an outgoing tide.
Since break of day,
I've watched the subtle, sweet breadth
of changing light call to the greenery,
"And now?"
And I've witnessed the skillful riposte,
"And now."
Could it be that all things billow
in unison to a rhythmic bellows
that expands their moments,
yet at the same time contracts,
drawing them back through minutes,
hours, days, weeks, months, years--
lifetimes, until all that remains
is a blithe memory of "now"?
© Donald Somersett
Waiting in the Greenroom
Teil & I are sitting at Rose's pink, plastic
table (the one at the front window, next to
the "Not an Exit" door), sipping absinthe
from his thermos & soldiering the sidewalk,
when a screaming old, bag lady shoves her
Safeway cart into rush hour traffic.
The clock on the wall says it's 7:45 a.m.
I check my watch and glance up at Teil.
"It's 7:48, nearly 7:49 . . . Think I should
say somethin' to Rosie?"
He just gives me one of his screwy smiles
and laughs. "Righteous, dude, righteous!"
"Man, it's all a freakin' blur, dig?"
Teil points at the rear-enders & the old woman
crying on the sidewalk--"Remember, we're not
bodies having a spiritual experience, but Spirit
having a body experience."
"You know what Sal would say?"
Teil grimaces, "No, what would Sal say?"
"He'd say it's about repentance."
"Rosie riding sidesaddle in sackcloth?
"Sal knows the way out."
"Does he know the way in?
"Okay, Teil, I'll shut up."
"That's it, surrender--a sadhana
for every day, every hour &
every moment. This here is a forced
march, son."
© Donald Somersett
Waiting in the Greenroom (2)
"I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday." --W.C.
Fields
The earth turned away from the blazing heat of day,
and the City of Brotherly Love rolled east.
Teil & I were cruising in & out of back alleys
on our way to Hooker Oaks to pick up Mary.
Yellow smog stirred wispily above the high-rises,
then slumped into the back seat of his Desoto.
"Damn, what's that smell, Teil?
Think we should put the top up?"
"No, it's the breath of the walking dead . . .
Somnambulism has become an art form,
a goaded response to finite schedules."
"Teil, pull over, pull over . . . Check this out!"
Judas claimed he was fed up with acting out,
but there he was hawking adjectives on Cloud
Street--bartering syntax for another meal.
"Hey man, we're headed over to the Oaks
to find Mary . . . Hop in!"
Judas gestured no with the sign of the cross
and continued his schtik, "His time is brief,
filled with godliness, stilled by grief . . . "
Teil salutes, then frowns--"Gustatory finalities
aside, singularities languish in radical roles."
"Poor guy! Yadda, yadda, yadda . . . Amen.
What a loser, huh Teil?"
"You just don't get it, son, and maybe you
never were meant to."
© Donald Somersett
