OFF MY BICYCLE
( December ,1999)

Off my bicycle
in December
back from Plymouth rock
on my orange kayak
as a whale watcher
back after a snow storm
on my Governor Winthrop desk
forgetting the time or season
of my grandfather clock
by catching the warmer sun
reading Helen Vendler
my former English professor
about Emily Dickinson
whose views vary (in a way)
of her own reasoned philosophy
contrary to a Puritan glossary,
while waiting for a new century
I' m in the hall
reading Oswald Spengler
about his cycle theories
lunging in on history
after the sponging madness
of several friends company
playing musical chairs
with a nostalgic laughter
at Christmas break
carrying the bard Catullus
in my arms from the library
and listening in the dawn
as we wake early
to hear a Bach cantata chorus
from the Harvard-Radcliffe choir
in an old recording
singing for us,
as we're eating a spinach
and cheese croissant
as a confection
and drinking a warm saki,
I'm in an old wizened sweater
and overalls
reading the bold letters
of Berryman and Lowell
as Akari recites
and tells us of her part
for an up and coming
five act series
of Japanese Noh plays
and freezes on her masks
in the underground poetry
now in a frenzy of her task
of acting out
of a wounded sensibility,
I'm sharing and relaxed
thinking of my own ability
as we jam on riffs of jazz
on my soprano sax
reciting our own slam poetry
to perform in the old library
for our predominately
student audience
hidden under the silence
of darkly hidden corners
at a once varsity dormitory
now a three circled row theater
with its widely
red marked marquee
outside the sports building
we are supporting the story
of a novel literary proof
from Leonard and Virginia Woolf's
free spirited chapters
here over a roof
above the city of Cambridge
wanting to just relax
from the strife and noise
of school girls and boys
in our wintry vacation plan
adjusted from our deep affection
at least for a poet's sensibility
of knowledge
in a spin of a life span.