Let me read just three more poems.
I should wear-- what do you call them-- bifocals.
And I bought a pair.
I bought them in Barcelona.
They were very cheap.
But Barcelona is a city covered with dog shit.
And you can't wear bifocals when there's
dog shit because you have to keep looking down
so you don't step in it, see.
And every time you look down, you
get dizzy because you're looking through the reading glasses.
You can only see this far, you know.
So then you take the bifocals and you turn them upside down.
You want to buy a pair of bifocals?
The frames are beautiful.
This is called "Milkweed."
Remember how unimportant they seemed, growing loosely
in the open fields we crossed on the way to school?
We would carve wooden swords and slash at the luscious trunks
until the white milk started and then flowed.
Then we'd go on to the long day after day
of the History of History, or the tables of numbers
and order, as the clock slowly paid out the moments.
The windows went dark, first with rain and then snow.
And then the days, then the years ran together.
And not one mattered more than another.
And not one mattered.
Two days ago, I walked the empty woods,
bent over, crunching through oak leaves,
asking myself questions without answers.
From somewhere, a froth of seeds drifted
by touched with gold in the last light of a lost day,
going with the wind, as they always did.