Walking on Bryn Mawr past the Park
On Tuesday afternoon, something like a shark
splits the bowing limbs and buildings and the moon
appears like a boulder exposing itself in the river
of blue sky and foam. Last night too I was walking
listening to a lecture which connected walking
to thought, and stopped in my shadow as a car
came up behind me, lighting the path and the skunk
ten paces ahead. I turned around, believing in signs
and dropped an online course on Model Thinking
picked one up on Gamification, so I might be better at
splitting endeavors – I remember one winter playing Zombies
Ate my Neighbors while listening to my first Apocalypse
Hoboken album – I tried my best to like cigarettes –
“1999 will be the best New Year’s ever – and Prince will be
a rich man again.” Flight is a funny thing. You take a nap
and wake up somewhere you’ve never been: time, if not
place. In the cedar kitchen of a small clapboard cottage
she is pouring pancake batter onto a skillet. Meanwhile
he is chopping wood. An older woman, setting flatware
on a checkerboard tablecloth held by twin rooster-
shaped candleholders, partridge pepper and salt,
says don’t be so dramatic and he says I am not
hungry as tiny bubbles appear in the batter, as I
iron the crease from my pants, wipe fog from the mirror,
wave to the sharks circling the tree limbs, eyeing eggs
in aeries of braided twigs, hair, and used mint floss –
as she works a spatula under the halfway pancake and flips.
Jim Davis is a teacher. He lives in a world where nothing is ordinary. He is passionate about poetry and painting. He graduated from Knox College with a degree in studio art. He has won several poetry contests and has appeared in print multiple times.
Copyright © 2013 by Jim Davis
Cover Photo by Dion Loubser