Michael T. Young: The Risk of Listening To Brahms

I like action movies for the same reason
I like Brahms, or undiluted scotch,
the constant flux of the sea,
or the sun’s light and heat stripped down
to raw fire, to the burning sine qui non,
like the first time I fired a gun and felt
deliriously naked and in that denuded moment,
remembered what I was chasing after when
as a teenager, without telling anyone,
I hopped on a bus for Philadelphia
and checked into the first hotel,
struggling to dodge those who knew me
to find if I wasn’t something more
than they expected, or could become
something other than they could know,
thrilled by the risk and uncertainty, the same
as when I hiked a mountain without water
on a humid summer afternoon,
trudging deeper into heat exhaustion,
the nausea stopping me every twenty feet
to gather strength from the pleasure
of wondering if I would make it home.

Copyright 2018 Michael T. Young. First published in RATTLE and included in Vox Populi by permission of the author.

Michael T. Young’s new book is The Infinite Doctrine of Water published by Terrapin Books.

.

Michael T. Young