unloading.....

a lot has happened in the past few weeks, and all I can seem to do , or rather, all that I want to do is sit at home, drink hot tea, write about everything--all the intersections and events that keep converging with each other in all areas of my life--in all forms, and watch all the programs I've dvr-ed.
I've also been thinking about how I am a fan of teams who can't seem to fully exercise their playing potential: My volleyball team, every year
the Indians
the Wolverines
the Browns
the Cavs
just to name a few....
and then I've been thinking about how my life seems to have gotten busier than I have time to sit and make sure I'm breathing. Just now, I got back from class, went to the dining hall to eat dinner, and literally sat down to eat my meal, finishing it in less than 10 minutes. You'd be proud of me too: I ate a tilapia filet, a serving of eggplant parmesan, edamame provencal, and a hearty-portioned salad, plus a marbled pound cake. yum.

but eating all that in under ten minutes? made me feel like I was in the army...
and I question how much faster life will fly by.

just this past weekend, i was in chicago for a wedding. And I felt like I've been so out of the loop. People are living and changing...and I don't know where I stand anymore...

but what I do know is that wake up and look forward to my nephew, I look forward to making a difference in these students lives...
and I hope that in the midst of it, I'm growing up too.

bah.
and this guy below is coming tomorrow...

In the Library

Beneath leaf-light fluttered ceilings,
river’s gaudy flashes and streams,
language lost when we waken
in books, their muted horizons,

I step quietly. Five students sprawl.
Two at bookbags curled, fetal.
Three appear almost bags of flesh,
shot in chairs, or robbed, trashed,

mysteries unsolved. But no crime,
though something’s come
to rake loot as students sleep.
Some treasure seems missing, its feel

bleeds under these sleepers. I take
my chair, and sigh, break my book,
and one’s cell phone rings like hope
uselessly. Brave enough to flop,

they drift past tests dim as water.
What makes them dream? I feared
unknowns, gaps, history’s blank
with no name, no clue. Panicked,

I’m their age again, unsure, then
asleep, watching my head lift in
nightmares of who I am, or not.
1965. Ratty jeans, no socks,

button-down, tweed, striped tie
half-loose, hair chaos like JFK.
Puppies, we crawled to the edge,
night barked big words, little dogs

of Cuba. What did we know?
Some died. Asia. Some I knew.
Notes on dates, facts, forces,
theorems, theories, abstract choices

battles, weapons . . . what explained?
Did dead fathers find it this way,
in books, sleeping? I’m vexed,
a teacher wandering dusty stacks,

as I often do, weight to read
less than trouble on my mind,
a need to loaf as light twists
leaves, drops here. Is it happiness

flows by, like sun on water?
What I feel with these dreamers,
faces blank of intent,
earphones on, playing the end

of songs to me foreign as tombs,
books they won’t open or use
to sniff blood’s secrets, facts
somebody’s listed, names, lost

hopes surfaced here again
and again. Let tests be done.
My heart’s up, down. These
go steady as new machines.

Each will go fast, faster. Then stop.
Still as memory. Slack as rope.
Books gape. The mystery’s
breath itself, sun, dark. Sharp keys

poke my pocket like a need.
Still, I don’t want to leave.
Lingering with penitents
soon to wake seems mostly right,

if it’s little, really, but masks,
a room of dust on fate’s books,
a room of sun blurring words
where people come for answers.

“In the Library” published in Little Boats,Unsalvaged by Dave Smith.
Copyright © 2005 by Dave Smith. All rights reserved.