OK.
One more.
I'm going to read this one from my teachers and for my friends
here.
It's called Voiceover.
This will be the last one.
So I never got clearheaded and never purposeful,
was no fletcher of arrows, no jobber,
no motor boy in a lube hut.
And I certainly couldn't say I was
like those in Costa Rica, who cut crude birds from aluminum
pie plates to sell on the street.
I was nowhere near that focused.
But it turned out fine once I put on a gown
and married myself to you.
My confusion, my bafflement, my perennial distraction,
my brother who is me if I am honest.
It happened unexpectedly one morning
as I was crossing some traffic staking
my claim against a road full of streaming vehicles,
on the other side combing my hair in honor of the progress
I'd made.
I decided never again to admire anyone who is centered and calm.
I was 16 years old or 75.
I was not too late.
I thought of calling my friends in other states.
But they were asleep, their pillows like well used boxes
of matches.
In dreams, we set ourselves on fire,
hopeful of changes happening.
I wanted to tell my friends: the clouds
that do all the thinking inside my head
saying to me like a choir the Sisters of Mercy assembled.
Now I could ask the woods in which my mother walked
for her release.
None of my friends could tell later how it was my hands
got dirtied, the nails blackened.
I had forgotten much myself.
Would I remember how in a side yard
off a street behind the square I had just
crossed that when one of the silk shirts standing
there tried to correct me into the right posture,
all I need do in reply was press a leaf against my lips.
Oh.
Yes.
The poor like us should celebrate.
That was progress.
Thank you.