Spring

Spring

80 Spring This morning, I slammed my knee against the bottom bed frame corner hidden by quilts. I didn’t know today would be the day Robert Creeley died. Just stopped breathing; they call that “respiratory failure.” I just saw him two weeks ago having a sense of humor about the deterioration of the body. He said you wake into awe again after age 50, like a baby wakes into awe, or like a teenager waking daily into his dizzying, unfathomable development. And at age 50, again, because parts you never knew you had suddenly make themselves known in their malfunction, in their arbitrary collapse. It’s so sunny today that I went outside to walk around a bit. I don’t want my teachers to die. The world is so stupid without them, obstinate and stupid. I walked past the big vans that load and unload their gaudy, awful furniture, opening their big blue rear doors and slamming them shut again. One of the vans had somebody’s matted sweatshirt peeling off the back of the driver’s seat. When I looked 81 on the pavement behind the van, I saw a sparrow that the van had run over. The sparrow was completely flattened with its wings splayed out. The church bells rang right then. Either it was three o’clock, or the bird was three years old, like how they used to ring the number of years a person lived at his funeral. I don’t want to go home again so quickly, but it’s not as warm out here as I thought. In fact, it’s cold out here. The sun is white and cold after all. And anyway, the trash is blowing. That blind man that lives at the top of the hill is feeling his way up the hill again from the street below. Now his right hand is on the telephone pole and his left is flitting his white cane back and forth. I run by him as quietly as I can. My landlady’s dead Christmas tree is out in the rubbish heap. I guess it’s spring. ...