Dear Mind,
You are dear. Without you I'm nothing.
Often with you I'm almost nothing
but you tell me that I can't really
conceive of nothing, so you instruct me
to use "almost" up there. When I first learned
your name, Mind, I was a child.
Your name was not one of those words
that interested me. It seemed like other words
for things, like car, sidewalk, leaf.
Except unlike those things I couldn't see you
or ride inside you (it never occurred to me
I could) or walk on top of you or watch you
turn colors and fall. In many ways both of us
miss those days, days that if there were no school
were sometimes fabulously unending.
The nights were rarely as good, school or not, since
you made me so afraid of the dark. Yes, I'm
blaming you. And whatever parts of me
are not you
also deserve blame. So here we are, both
67, truly approaching the dark. You suggest I write
"truly and falsely approaching the dark"
and there, have I satisfied you?
______
______________
John Levy
Silence Like Another Name
otata's bookshelf
2019
