I wanted to be normal.
I hoped to be normal.
Yet I was abnormal right away, as far as I could tell.
Maybe we all were. Just didn't know it.
Didn't turn out the way society hoped.
------
I was born male, was that it? There's a movie playing
downstairs on TV. It's one fight after another. Nature nurtured.
------
We live in the country. In a valley
Two hundred years ago dairy cows cropped it bare
sugar maples outlined the fields
oxen dragged enormous glacial debris into Inca-impressive
walls that would last an aspiring family for generations
Three hundred years ago only the original inhabitants knew it
not as a destination, it was a place without
much in the way of sustenance outside game
------
We live in a valley, an acoustical cup, and tonight
someone's having a big party everyone else
can hear. The cover band is well amplified
in the distance. Don't know
what they're singing but it's comforting
My window is wide open
------
I love it when the keyboardist returns.
He makes a statement into the mic, to jazz the crowd
bring their focus back to the stage
his voice rolls lightly over these ancient hills,
second-growth-capped hills, oaks blasted by gypsy moths,
almost a bird call
he sounded like an owl cooing at first, so I mistook
200 years ago this valley was 20% wooded
now it is 60% wooded and that's only increasing
toward oblivion except for urban and suburban farming
pioneers and hold-outs
"Ancient" hills? We have a long defunct volcano
from the very core of the earth in
our own back yard, from WAY
before the dinosaurs. I freely use its lava
sand to make weed-resistant paths
tonight I am 2 bottles into
a bag-in-box rosé; I didn't know
I could walk this far
or drink this much every day
yet against the standards of men my age (69) be
accounted healthy; is this as good as such tests get?
I ran today, up a steep hill