Second Childhood Read Free Page B

white clover,
    trampled where little
    sweet pea is growing higher.
    Down the hill comes a poet
    with ginger hair, he puts
    violets inside his hat,
    herbs and water and says:
    There was once music here,
    a round table
    and gang prayer,
    and an exploding glacier.
    Women kept each tent clean
    until one cried,
    I’m going to take care
    of myself.
    We heard her packing
    the woods into her tote
    like a nymph
    managing a shipwreck.
    After that, for us all
    empathy was our only hope.

A Vision
    Some old people want to leave this earth and
    experience another.
    They don’t want to commit suicide. They want to
    wander out of sight
    without comrades or luggage.
    Once I was given such an opportunity, and what did
    I find?
    Mist between mountains, the monotonous buzz of
    farm machinery,
    cornstalks brown and flowers then furrows
    preparing to receive seeds for next year’s harvest.
    A castle, half-ruined by a recent earthquake still
    highly functional.
    Computers, copying machines and cars.
    It was once a monastery and home for a family
    continually at war.
    Cypress trees and chestnut and walnut trees. A swing
    hanging long from a high bough,
    where paths circle down, impeding quick escapes by
    armies or thieves.
    I was assigned the monastic wing that later became
    a granary.
    Brick-red flagstones, small windows with hinged
    casements
    and twelve squares of glass inside worn frames.
    From the moment I entered the long strange space,
    I foresaw an otherworldly light taking shape.
    Scorpions lived in the cracks.
    I came without a plan, empty-handed except for my
    notebooks from preceding days.
    This lack was a deliberate choice: to see what would
    be revealed to me by circumstances.
    I took long walks that multiplied my body into
    companionable parts.
    Down dusty roads and alongside meadows,
    and pausing to look at the mountains and clouds,
    I talked to myself.
    Mysticism “provides a path for those who ask the way
    to get lost.
    It teaches how not to return,” wrote Michel de Certeau.

    One day I had the sense that there were two boys
    accompanying me everywhere I went.
    I could not identify the boy on the left,
    but the one on the right was overwhelmingly himself.
    Someone I knew and loved.
    The other one was very powerful in his personality,
    an enigma and a delight.
    His spirit seemed to spread into the roads and
    weather.
    Silver olive trees and prim vineyards.
    Now a rain has whitened the morning sky but every
    single leaf holds a little water and glitter.

    Mirror neurons experience the suffering that they see.
    A forest thick with rust and gold that doesn’t rust.
    I saw a painting where the infant Jesus was lying on
    his back
    on the floor at the feet of Mary
    and his halo was still attached to his head.
    And another painting where there were about forty
    baby cherubs
    all wearing golden halos. Gold represents the sun as
    the sun represents God.
    Outside wild boars were still roaming the hills.
    Maize, sunflowers, honey, thyme, beans, stones,
    olives and tomatoes.
    Rush hour in the two-lane highway.
    Oak tree leaves curled into caramel balls.
    A Franciscan monk sat on a floor reciting the rosary, a concept borrowed from Islamic prayer beads centuries before.
    Figs, bread, pasta, wine and cheese.
    These are not the subconscious, but necessities.
    People want to be poets for reasons that have little to
    do with language.
    It is the life of the poet that they want, I think.
    Even the glow of loneliness and humiliation.
    To walk in the gutter with a bottle of wine.
    Some people’s lives are more poetic than a poem
    and Francis is certainly one of these.
    I know, because he walked beside me for that
    short time
    whether you believe it or not. He was thirteen.
    That night I drank walnut liqueur, just a sip, it tasted
    like Kahlua.
    The inner wing of a bird is the color of a doe.
    And the turned-over earth is the color of a nut, and a bird,
    but soon it will be watered for the green wheat of spring.
    Flying up the hill on the back