Recent Poems

Nostalgia (2003)

The other day at the doctor’s office
the nurse sized me up, professionally.
"You can’t be fifty!" She meant, dear reader,
that I looked much younger. I put up a good front,
you understand. This is a silly way
to begin a poem, I know, but I’ve been
reading Jaroslav Seifert’s poetry,
in translation, of course, and I’m feeling
that it’s fine to begin a poem and watch
where it goes. So, anyway, I think I knew,
for a moment, what a shy, country
girl might feel if a famous producer
proclaimed her tomorrow’s Hollywood star
and imagined, if only an instant,
another life far, far from home.

I examine my life now with all its
essays to grade, old cars and trucks to keep
running, pop songs to love or not, gadgets
to purchase or ignore, politicians
to protect myself from, rights to defend,
promotions at work to earn and/or keep,
and I am frightened—like a dog with screwed
up olfactory glands must be when it
discovers a skunk has snuck upon it
in broad daylight—to understand I,
a middle-aged man, am not nostalgic.

When was it any different, really?
I cannot remember a time when some
parent was not displeased or at death’s door,
some coach not yelling, grim officials not
explaining rules, presidents not trading
truth for power, some girlfriend not wishing
for a bracelet or ring of brighter gold.
I know no illusions of health in times
past. No sweet chuck of candy clings to folds
of memory to be sucked again, slow,
when I am bored on the hard pew of present
circumstances. No watermelon cools
in the spring of years to be sliced open,
rich and firm, upon the table of my
personal history. My homesickness
is no disease of loss or regret turned
into vain hope. What cravings do I have
for gluttonous fantasies of misspent
youth? Always there was too much, too many
M&M’s, too many celebrities,
too many theme parks, too many angered
games of Scrabble, Monopoly, and Risk.

If I am nostalgic, I’m nostalgic
for the experience of nostalgia.
Where is my green meadow, quiet river,
and kingfisher? Where is the generous
gesture of spring shade, the memory of
book or bouquet in an innocent hand?
I yearn, I think, only for sweet yearning.

So I felt the nurse would surely place
her hand on my leg, and request that I
undress. I studied her eyes for a kind
of curiosity, then at the ham
of her thigh, at the suggestion of moist
lips, then at the upturned hint of her snout.
Is this what we become nostalgic for,
the incandescent moment given free,
the ample gifts of benevolent chance?
There was nothing I wished for there, sitting
on crinkly rolled paper, the fat fingers
of opportunity taking my pulse,
except for the things I do on my way
to a place where crimes go unrepeated.

So I can accept this, accept there is
no perfect past to return to calmly,
accept there is no present stasis to
defer tomorrow’s newness to, accept, in
searching, in working, continuous
intensity facing forward symptoms
old pathologies healing into to fresh
diseases, accept that home, that mobile
construction without past or destiny,
is not what I’m sick for, but where I am.

06/28/03-07/3/03