Stop, stop!
I shouted.
Someone in my waking dream
was shining a light on me.
I shuffled downstairs
to make some coffee,
to feed the cats,
to stoke the fire.
This song is making me sad.
This song. . .
this song, listen. . .
I’m a poet.
And you?
I’m a worrier.
What worries you?
I’m worried about a lot of things.
One is,
that I have gotten too old
to fix things when they break
like myself,
like the world.
I wasn’t raised to depend on others.
My father once snow-shoed up Mount Greylock
with two friends.
All the way up, his lower back was killing him.
On the way down,
he was in agony.
He didn’t know it at the time
but two of his discs were herniated.
When he got down
to the parking lot
his friends were long gone.
He doesn’t remember
how he drove all the way home.
Every time I drive past Mount Greylock
I think of him in the parking lot
wondering how he was going to get home.