Jose Padua: In the Season of Saints and Angels and Other Misfits

Thank you for the 80s, they were some
of the most beautiful days I’ll never remember,
thank you for the 90s, which I remember more of
even though I was drinking so much more,
and all those decades before and after that
I’ll only mention in passing because it’s late.
Thank you for justice on those rare occasions
when it occurs, thank you for all those years
of no war, years that may have only happened
in my head when I’d fallen asleep on a bed
of grass and lilacs on a night that smelled
like tea leaves. Thank you for blueberry preserves
with cream cheese in the morning, I wake up
best with this taste and its colors, I stand up
from my chair with the steadiness of a gallant
horse. Thank you for tolerance when it is forthcoming
that I can walk with my shakes then step on a bus
that will take me home when home is too far
for my tired feet and legs to take me. Thank you
for the obscure music I love that all the assholes hate,
this may seem like a hipster’s pleasure but it’s more
like discount insurance against corporate entertainment
that might otherwise distract me from the mountains
I must seek and the rivers whose ripples I must count
until I can’t stop laughing. Thank you for unscented soap,
that other stuff just gives me a damn headache.
Thank you for joy in the midst of sorrows, I tremble
at the thought of being without it on those days
when it’s hard to lift my head and so easy to think
of dying. Thank you for love when the world is half mad
and shouting because there’s too much to be mad about
and more than enough to shout about for a million billion years,
and there is never enough, never a time when it isn’t worth it to say so,
to tell that this is what matters and that this, in the long run under the falling sky,
is how like saints and angels and other misfits, we breathe.

—

copyright 2014 Jose Padua. Used with permission.

Main Street in Front Royal on Saturday (photo by Jose Padua)