My Song for the Asking...

I have a photograph in my mind
of another time  and I wonder how
I got here -

here in my kitchen with a cup
of coffee -still using cream (no sugar)
after all these years -
when with a tap on my shoulder
Simon and Garfunkel being wording - I have a photograph
they showed me - a preserved memory
as their voices begin to softly

guide me back  through the years, talking
me back to my dreams of organdy and
memories clothed in crinoline -

back, back  when I first walked off
to look for America
leaving my Emily Dickinson, my Robert Frost, to
sit in a railway station in Chicago
trying  to ignore the whores on 7th ave
and hiding in the comfort of my lonely room,
and wishing I was home again, back
in my little town, but

instead  they showed me
when I got a ticket
east thinking my poetry would
protect me - knowing  homeward bound was
not an option - I feared stagnation,  its dangling
conversations - its couplets out of rhyme
and I was driven to move further from its
hazy shades of winter -

when in a car on the Pennsylvania turnpike
I met a Mrs.Robinson she said, she too was
looking for America, but had to
hide it from the kids... lost I turned off
the radio and found myself seeking only the
the sounds of silence - and then all alone, walking among
leaves of brown, snow on the ground
I turned the music back on

loaded my car
and hit the road west -

spanning America this time, meeting a boxer
reciting Dylan in a coffee shop, he was not really
mak'in it, I realized he or was it me
just  fak'in it...until finally
reaching
land of  El Condor I met others
like me who would rather be
hammers than nails, and began
building a life with them --

and sending for my Emily and
Robert - those old friends I finally
placed them in bookends
where today they still
remain my bridge over
troubled waters
as I sit with my coffee
writing -
my song for the asking
sipping on
sounds of silence


bkmackenzie
copyrighted  2010

My entry for Poets United Think Tank Thursday #7 (Sounds) --you can read more by clicking...bkm