The Fountain

I’m quite parched
and off mark.
I could be cured
with just one
sip from the
Fountain of Youth.
And de Leon would have
my head and I
would wish I wasn’t
young anymore.
Some say,
that youth is wasted
on the young.
And I've heard its possible
to grow up,
I've just never met
anyone
whose actually done it.
But
life seen through
these eyes
have more to say
than my lopsided mouth
could ever utter.
Between you and me
and our hands,
wrinkled with the years.

Runners.

Hot air rises from the concrete
in swift, promising ringlets.
The noon sun bearing down on
unsuspecting townsmen.
Runners take their ritual jog,
stealing through each trail in all their
paled, sweated, short-shorted glory.
Soft claps of conversation left in their wake,
only spoken between soles and dry Carolina clay.
Moistened breaths quickened and whispered,
living to quiet the air.
Slight ups-and-downs of chests
oxidizes blood cells and
gives the Earth reason to revolve once again.
Maybe if there was one skipped step
the world would cease to move.
And we would be sent tumbling
into the blazing sun,
bones incinerated into the body's
last action of that day.
Maybe.
But the jaunt is not slowed,
the step not skipped,
and these runners never still.

A Pair of Darwin's Finches

It’s almost ironic now to ponder evolution,
and even more to teach it.
A bored room of twenty-something
ninth graders with their hands
plastered to the sides of their faces,
sleeping.

You’ll come to mind.
Not because you believed it,
in fact you're in fervid opposition.
As I gesticulate its components,
I’ll smile.

You never knew
how I would think about us.
How everyone insisted we were the same,
but we knew that we were different,
and I, being the logical one,
thought of evolution.
Your caustic behavior reminds me
of punctuated equilibrium.
Your decisiveness and the way you spoke
like you write
and write how you feel.
No finesse - that you could do without.
And the way your emotions ran
quickly and slowly at the same time.
And there were even moments
when they’d flatten out and I’d
wonder where you’d gone.
‘Cause you certainly weren’t
the same person.

And I like gradualism.
Growing at a steady pace,
monotonous in my ways
and thoughts.

We’d butt heads and kick
up the dirt in anger.
But when the dust settled
we were always unscathed.

After my students have gone,
rushing out at the dismissals ring.
I’ll realize it’s been too long
since you’ve called
or I’ve called.

No matter how hard we resisted change,
speciation took its course
and we were isolated.
Separately.
I can't tell you when or how
just that we are.
Maybe it was inexorable;
maybe we brought it upon ourselves.