Something a little funny about race

Three black girls

sat in a corner

of Central Field.

An old white male

watched them

from across the way.

Presumptions are made

all the time

based on the color of skin,

of age, of gender.

It’s simpler that way.

Several years ago

these girls would have learned

how to add their ages together

and would still find that their total is

less than my single sum.

But are we equal to?

My people,

I presume those generations long gone

to be mine,

they came to this part of the world

some years well after

their people, more presumptions made,

were freed in this country’s

Civil War,

skirmishes for their freedom

breaking out from time to time

to this very day.

So many simplifications

in telling the tales.

Their people.

My people.

People of my skin color

and my gender,

were mindlessly  and maliciously

raping and lynching

those people of darker hues -

so long ago by these girls lives,

yet so very near the time of my own birth

in this land of the not yet fully free.

All this matters,

the math and the history,

but today I care about something else.

These school girls must have seen me coming

and I hope their merry laughter

is of a simple sort,

and I smile at what I presume

young girls might find that is funny

in a ruddy face and aging gait.

If only we each get our turn.

And then they rose,

their kinky black hair,

their skinny-jeaned legs

like scissors in harmony,

and the three girls scampered up the hill

and vanished behind the school house doors.

I presumed they were my people,

from the way they giggled.

Why wouldn’t I?

It’s better that way.

A smallish river

When’s the last time you watched a bird fly?

Not an event to write home about, I don’t suppose.

But what is?

Air and water,

earth and fire.

But unless we took nearly everything for granted, we would be constantly dumbstruck, awestruck - struck.

But we have breaths to take, and on and on, and we really must get on with our lives.

Even so, consider this gull I saw: white, on the smallish side, without a known species name.

He or she – I can’t tell you that detail either – has been flying over a stretch of the Kaw River in front of me for several minutes getting on with her life.

Just off this sandbar, the river appears to move in two directions at once: downstream, in smallish ripples along the far bank, pulled by gravity, and upstream, smallish ripples, pushed in front of the wind.

The gull makes a vigorous flutter with her wings, then drops to the surface of the river for an instant or two, then, with her wings, lifts herself into the air and a flies a few feet farther downstream, where she repeats her motions again, and then, again, she flutters and then drops, only to lift off again. Occasionally she settles onto the river, just floating for a few seconds, but then she is back to her flight.

At some point she lengthens her stroke and wheels around and flies, perhaps 50 yards upstream, then turns, and begins the process again.

This ordinary, smallish gull flew within my field of vision for several minutes, and then she was gone, flying somewhere else.

I sit here on the sandbar, not entirely dumbstruck as evidenced by these words.

But that gull was something to see.

And now between me and the sun, its radience coming through the thinning clouds, the sun, I tell you, is reflected in its brilliance on smallish ripples of the river, which in my aging eyes, spark with rays along skewed points of a compass, spikes of stabbing light, faster than my brain can record, a cluster of them drifting down near the far bank, and then nearer to me, more scattered, they appear to be pushed upstream by the wind.

Larger gulls wheel over the smallish rapids where the Kaw tumbles a little perhaps a hundred yards upstream.

Maybe I’ll walk over and see.

Sun and sand, wind and water, flying gulls.

Nothing much to write home about.

Veteran's Day

This guy, a little older and scruffier than me,

who now and then sits on the sidewalk

in his Army green jacket,

back against the wall,

his damaged leg outstretched,

looking for all the world

like he plays a broken Vietnam Vet on TV,

stopped me after all these years

and asked for a cigarette.

I told him I didn’t smoke.

Then he said he needed $30

to buy a used pea coat before winter.

He said he’d give me $60 next month.

I replied that I didn’t have that kind of money on me.

I walked away.

He hasn’t spoken to me since.

I had a cocklebur stuck in my sock

I wandered down among the rocks and weeds

near the edge of the water.

The river was low.

Some pale purple asters glimmered like sequins

woven into the grasses.

I bent over to pick up a rock.

Why not?

And stuck it into my pocket.

I climbed back up to the top of the levee

and headed up the curve of the earth

tilting back away from the sun,

coursing lower,

although I couldn’t see it.

The sky was overcast,

yet still reflected in the river.

As I crossed over the bridge,

I felt an itch at my ankle.

I kept on walking,

each step a reminder

that I had stepped off

the hard and level path

before.

Finally, I bent over

and found a cocklebur stuck in my sock.

I had a cocklebur stuck in my sock.

October Blue

It’s a beautiful world

and not simply because

the Lawrence sky is October blue

and a woman young enough to be my daughter

strolls down the sidewalk,

her belly stretching her pink T-shirt

while pushing her stroller,

her first-born child looking out;

and not because of the young college couple,

who chat as they cross my path,

the young woman,

her slender legs stretching

her shiny, black leggings,

her pink toenails dancing along

the sidewalk bricks;

or the middle-school girl,

who ties her water-splotched, maroon T-shirt

in a knot above her midriff,

and then dashes behind my bench

to clamber up a tree,

her rust-haired friend running behind,

hand to her bulging rosy cheeks,

only to spray the still green ground,

laughing, when she finally reaches the tree

which shelters her nimble friend.

Come to think of it,

that is all there is to it,

after all.