Understand

March 9, 1997

 

 

I.

UNDERSTAND
this
and it helps
me
not at all
SHOOT
this missive
into
an unknown
space
out there
nothing
happens
here
where
the
longing
begins
THOSE
dreams
of sweet
asians
share
a
knowing:
they cannot
love me
as I might
love them.
LOOKING
backward
a wasteland
forty years
of struggle
up
some
self-made
mountain
always
climbing
up
on
my
back
another
two
yards
of
rocks
I carefully place
on
the
peak
like
Sissyphus
and then
do
it
over
and
over
THE AIR
is
thin
my
vision
clear
but
I
see
nothing
|
nothing
back
where
I
began
|
nothing
in
all
directions
SEEMS SILLY
to
shout
like those
convinced
ones
enraptured
by
this story
or
that one
SINGING
Sartre
cooing
Camus
just
repeats
the
silliness.
WHAT?
when
you
see
no
thing?
VISION
real
or
imagined
may be the wrong
sense
to
rely upon.

II.

Just now I'm looking
at the eyes of an old man,
a photographer's father.
His thickened
hands
light
the
stub of a
cigar
held in his
sensitive mouth.

This man is alive
with something I envy.

Over there
in another
picture of him
his atrophied
bare
body
holds
a drum
he is
joyously
beating.
WHAT?
does he
SEE
that I do not?

I'm told he has the company
of a young woman.

III.

Each of my days
now
starts
among the faces
of men and
women
all
black.

From
their
own
mountain tops
they
appear
to see
something
and
feel
something.

I see there
the stuff
of
joy.
THAT STUFF
is what
I want
Art Tatum's
great
face
shines
his
passion
his
feeling
concentrates
at
his
fingertips.
THAT FEELING
just
there
he
holds
briefly
before
my
ears?
'Do you get it?'
OR
Bud Powell
eyes flashing
oversees
a stack of
musical manuscripts.
There's life there.

That life
is
the
object
of
my
envy.
What will happen
if
I
let go?

Of
this
other thing. . .

What if
I
am
not
seeing
the
right
thing
again?
WHAT IF?
--Dad--
What
if
what
I
saw
was
an
endless
journey
and
what I didn't
see
carried
the
whole
weight?