Jose Padua: Every Evening Is a Train in the Unending Speed of Days

Every evening is a train. The floor
is covered with toys, and every minute
of the day a moment to imagine how
colors begin, how sound arises from
solid objects, and how the dirt on our
hands is a dazzling thing, giving us
magical powers we need to wash away
before we sleep, before their odd shapes
twist and run off to corners and closets
to become nightmares that belong to
everyone. We are born into this world
an ocean floor, dry, but slowly filling
with water and tiny swimming creatures
that grow into blue whales and flying
fish, our feelings for everything nearly
all affection, borne upon the lightness
of our wings. We practice being green,
yellow, black, purple, red. We paint
things the color orange without worrying
if we’re getting it wrong because we
don’t understand the meaning of mistakes.
Tonight I will practice being all the things
I am not—the sound of a saxophone gliding
over the clanging of the cymbals, a picture
taken of the mist in the distant mountains
in the slow and solemn days before I arrived.

—

copyright 2015 Jose Padua

    .Photograph by Jose Padua