AndyPosner.org

Paradise

Andy 1 min read
poetry

I’m in a cabana on a beach in Cancún looking
upon light-blue water so warm you can walk
right in, no need to adjust to the temperature.

And isn’t this the dream? The thing for which
we work, the reason for college, grad school,
Marriage, family, a job—to afford an $800 / night

all-inclusive resort? To stretch out in the heat
Without a trouble in the world, your son forming
perhaps those first memories he’ll look back on

in later life, full of melancholy for childhood, for
learning to swim with his grandparents whose
love he will cherish long after they have passed?

Trouble is, the gears of my worrying mind won’t
stop, even here. I know why the sea is 84 degrees,
the economics of everything-included. I wonder

what the Yucatán Jays make of me, circling above
like Gods surveying the fallen world they birthed.
Do they demand a sacrifice for these gifts so

unjustly bestowed? What use are they to me, or I
to them, if I do not swim out beyond the pier until I am
become horizon, no less flawed for being unreachable?

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poetry

Diary

Ages ago I kept a diary in a hand legible to
none but me. I read it on my knees as just-fallen

rain clings to pinecones like wet feathers,
the evening slips into its velvet gown,

and starlight pitter-patters on my head
like drops of gallium. I am thankful

the day is dying, for I have forgotten how
to live. Who wrote those words belongs

to an empire that collapsed under its
own grandiose weight, its high priest

· 1 min read
poetry

Enlightenment

I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen
a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe
sunset drape itself over my mind, falling asleep thinking
of not thinking, hearing a flock of birds and imagining myself
flapping against the sky and recalling that I am sky. Once,
the book well-thumbed and creased and read twice over,
I felt an ant crawl the length of my arm like a nagging
sense that

· 1 min read
poetry

Foul Weather Friend

I am a foul weather friend, dear poetry.
I have paid you no mind when spring rains
wash clean the marble statues of gods
and a cheery sun
reads aloud your sweet inscriptions,
nor when awed children skip through museums,
nor accordion-song fills the subway,
nor a stranger does another stranger
a kindness,
nor blueberries are so ripe they bleed sugar,
nor velvet chocolate cake knocks you dizzy with love,
nor, after making love, my wife’s perfume
clings

· 1 min read