top of page
A Small Gift
If you’re like me you’ll know I’m calling
five minutes before the phone rings,
or you’ll open a book
left on a shelf and find that quote
you were trying to remember five minutes ago
If you’re like me, five minutes after
you round the corner thinking of someone
you’ll find him sitting there in a coffee shop
reading his newspaper and if you’re like me
You can’t bend spoons or levitate or anything
like that; perhaps you’re lying on your stomach
concentrating, watching a fish as it slips
between the fronds and moss of some shaded bend
in a stream, wondering if it will find a wriggler there
and that afternoon you find your old history book
and laugh at how you underlined the words
Diet of Worms
Or you get this craving for an out-of-season banana
and your niece calls from Australia—she’s just got a new
yellow canary and guess what she’s calling it
And if you’re like me every once in a while you’ll try
to figure it out, how sometimes you see the world
like two partly overlapping pages or two identical trains
going from here to somewhere one five minutes in front
but it’s not something you can figure out at all
So here we are, you and I and I don’t know how many others,
thinkers, poets, busy mothers, waitresses, postmen, just
ordinary folk, opening a book, answering the phone,
sitting in a café, wishing every so often
We could see a little further, understand a little more,
but most of the time just accepting this tiny gift
with a smile of recognition just five minutes
after we receive it
© Johnmichael Simon
.
bottom of page