Poem Therapy at 10:01 P.M. - Tony Hoagland

I Have News for You
Tony Hoagland

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,
who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

I love this poem. Love the in-your-face speaker making me turn my eyes inward and then outward again to see the breathing world.

You know what? I have news for you, (and by you, I mean me and anybody who cares to indulge me on yet another one of my soapbox litanies): In the very near future I plan on becoming the kind of person who is satisfied just to feel the warm summer air limn my face like breath on a window. I plan on seeing the natural world for what it is, a living organism, rather than as a backdrop for my petty dramas and projections.

Well okay, the reality is, I'm in year forty-eight of The Danna Show, so making a transition this huge is going to be hard. Very hard. I'll be patient if you will.

In the meantime, I have plans:
1. Sit under my corkscrew willow tree and stay focused on the present moment, no matter what, (I will not think of a six-cheese bagel covered in spicy tomato pinenut cream cheese once).
2. Get in the car, turn down all the windows and drive to Antelope Island just to smell the briny air, (I will not anticipate annoying brine flies on the beach, or three-deep pedal bikers hogging the road and pedalling like snails on tiny trikes).
3. Drink a Bloody Mary and take great interest making a mini whirlpool in my glass by swirling the celery swizel, (I will not allude to the Tudors, in my thoughts or conversation once, and will most certainly not feel sympathy for Mary Tudor or indulge in postmodern thoughts about her bleak childhood under the tyrannical rule of her father, Henry VIII).
4. Allow the puppy to lick me on the neck, on the temple, near my left elbow, and my left shoulder, (I will only focus on the present moment of his joy with leaching the salt out of my body, rather than remembering what I have witnessed him eat in the past, especially what he has eaten out in the yard).