When I Think

When I think of where I've come from or even try to measure as any kind of distance those places, all the various people, and all the ways in which I re- member them, so that even the skin I touched or was myself fact of, inside, could see through like a hole in the wall or listen to, it must have been, to what was going on in there, even if I was still too dumb to know anything --- When I think of the miles and miles of roads, of meals, of telephone wires even, or even of water poured out in endless streams down streaks of black sky or the dirt roads washed clean, or myriad, salty tears and suddenly it's spring again, or it was --- Even when I think again of all those I treated so poorly, names, places, their waiting uselessly for me in the rain and I never came, was never really there at all, was moving so confusedly, so fast, so driven like a car along some empty highway passing, passing other cars --- When I try to think of things, of what's happened, of what a life is and was, my life, when I wonder what it meant, the sad days passing, the continuing, echoing deaths, all the painful, belligerent news, and the dog still waiting to be fed, the closeness of you sleeping, voices, presences, of children, of our own grown children, the shining, bright sun, the smell of the air just now, each physical moment, passing, passing, it's what it always is or ever was, just then, just there.