A Poem for March

Seeing Chicago

Temporal Joys

How pleasant it is to not be writing today

not needing to pay intense attention to any moment.

How good it is not to have to be really good at anything

I do today

especially poetry.

 

I can play my fiddle badly or just go sit in Bughouse Square.                               

I don’t have to be ultra awake talking to my neighbor

or sitting in the dentist’s chair.

I have no need to be guilty

for not writing all the damn time.

 

It’s much better to wander the ancient streets of Lamu

with tiny children who cry Jambo, Jambo until

I return their greeting.

Or to amble over to my neighborhood barber shop

for the monthly amateur political stylings

of Hector and Mario.

 

Why try to think of anything

meaningful to say

or get impatient with the

junk I write?

I needn’t be precise with my words today

or brilliant or brave or even fair.

I’ll not be writing.

 

Today I don’t have to pursue

metaphor or simile like an urban coyote

searching out a toy poodle.

Instead I can float down

the Thames to Hampton Court

stop for a summer shandy and raucous songs

in my favorite pub.

 

I can sit and contemplate ghostly

chimney vapors casting shadows on the building

next door before I take a notion to look

for my high school yearbooks because

I can’t quite remember what Cynthia looked like back then.

 

It’s perfectly suitable to ride the 157 bus

end to end

both ways.

Spend time at Cape May or Belmont Harbor

or have the supreme flat bread breakfast with Karen

at Pierrot Gourmet in the Peninsula

and argue whether to use a tip calculator or just wing it.

 

I am a poet nonetheless.  

I roam about

pray for happenstance – perchance inspiration

and worry I might miss its dawn.

 

Such trials notwithstanding

poetry is my excuse to look

listen and maybe     

see.

 

 Copyright ©2013 Larry Ambrose