Distraction, Forgetting, and the Year Ahead

These are the days of distraction and forgetting. Of too-short days. Of wet weather that's good for us and the world around us, which is everything; but that can also be gray, soggy, and, ungrateful as it is to say, depressing. Dark end of December. The year's finale.

Anyway. We made it through 2010, and we're ready to give 2011 a go. For all of you who have happened this way and continue to do so, thanks, and I hope you all have a great year. And to conclude the scheduled programming, here's a poem that someone share with me earlier today. It's by Paul Hostovsky, a poet I knew not before today. It's posted here with a total lack of permission, but if you like it, here's a link the poet's website, where you can buy the book in which this appears ("Dusk Outside the Braille Press"). 

Be Mine

I love mankind most
when no one’s around.
On New Year’s Day for instance,
when everything’s closed
and I’m driving home on the highway alone
for hours in the narrating rain,
with no exact change,
the collector’s booth glowing ahead
in the tumbling dark
like a little lit temple
with an angel inside and a radio
which as I open my window,
a little embarrassed by
my need for change
(until the silence says
it needs no explanation),
is suddenly playing a music more lovely
than any I’ve ever heard.
And the hand—
so open, so hopeful,
that I feel an urge to kiss it—
lowers the little life-boat of itself
and takes the moist and crumpled prayer
of my dollar bill from me.
Then the tap, tap,
tinkling spill of the roll of coins
broken against the register drawer,
and the hand returning two coins, and a voice
sweeter than the radio’s music,
saying, “Have a good one, man.”
I would answer that voice if I could—
which of course I can’t—
that I’ve loved it ever since it was born
and probably longer than that.
Though “You too,”
is all I can manage,
I say it with great emotion
in a voice that doesn’t sound like me,
though it must be
mine.