Velocities, and: The Birth of Tragedy

Velocities

The spry young sprinterI once was left me behindFor good this winter

Morning on my jog,When, my legs gone rubber, aJ. Crew catalogue

Of lithe ApollosBlithely passed by, then vanished.I know what follows:

Back pangs, ravaged knees,A cruel accrual ofMounting maladies,

And slow, then slowerMovements, till, to get the mailMeans a half hour

Lost, overborne bonesCreaking—old house in high winds—With the speed of stones

Skipped life bounding pastAnd blurring into perfectStillness far too fast.

The Birth of Tragedy

Funny story. I wasn’t able to walk upright on my ownTwo too long before I found myself possessed by an urge to go  outside to play.One rule: stay, stay in the yard. So I’d twirl myself dizzy and fall,  lisp Highway to the Danger Zone,Roll down the hill like a barrel, or teeter clapping at lightning  bugs. But in the yard I’d stay.What a good boy am I! I’d think. (Jack Horner was good, not mean  like that snot Georgie Porgie).Then one day the sky was wolves and the faraway pines were  smoky and I was bad and alone.At first, my wooden rifle blew bad men without faces to  smithereens in a petulant orgyOf deathless death. And then I saw the farmhouse down the road  by the pines. Then I was gone.

October, and the field wild with broom and tares was a  harmonious bronze sea, enwovenWith quick patterns by slithering winds. I stumbled toward the  happy white house on the remoteHilltop, brandishing my toy. Arriving, though, I found porch-steps  broken, windows gone, and            darkness inside. Sensing a covenOf witches might be in there waiting, watching, I scared,  turned. Baaa! Face to face with a goat,I leapt from the porch and made the dirt road, running all the  way home and filling the gray skyWith shrieking and terror, the goat chasing, and tears, and no one  could hear me or help me not die.