Did You Learn Anything

Did You Learn Anything? Go ahead. Put your shoes on. Walk outside and face the nervous day. Know that your lungs will not resist you. Know that your heart will still stir. Put the key in the ignition. Now turn the crank. You are back there now. As if in a dream so ordered. It is 1937 on Hoover Street. The oleanders are bleeding. Perfumed orange trees spit white loogies. Clean children emerge from green digs. Mothers hang clothes on uncomplaining lines. Your grandmother is back there. She’s wearing black reptile oxfords. Go ahead. Walk down the long gravelly driveway. Pass the back porch steps there. Pass the red-blooming bougainvillea. There she is, alive again as she was. Unfurling laundry with old clothespins. Singing an old Salvation Army song. Go ahead. Talk to her. Tell her who you are. “Baba. Baba, it’s me, Your surviving grandson, Harry. I wanted to tell you, I am a poet now. An engineer of the human soul. A standard-bearer for the mad, Dressed in mindful metaphor. You look young despite the goiter, There inside your sinewy neck. It appears and seems as if, The goiter is a python at sleep, Scrunched up inside there, All rolled up like kneaded bread. I hope it doesn’t hurt you. I come from the future, Baba. I know that sounds crazy, but I am visiting from the year 2020.” The world of my time screams In lockdown, like medieval Europe, People of every nation and tongue, Too afraid to emerge from their walls, Too fearful of even breathing in, Imbibing in, with lost enthusiasms, Mountain fresh air from the antipodes; Fearful of catching and releasing It - the Corona Virus monster microbe moving Silently across the terrified landscapes, Devouring the cool mornings, Aside the neon evenings, even Robbing the noon day of hopeful turnings. “Baba, can I stay here with you, In this golden simple time of 1937? May I remain here now, A happy and relieved rider, Astride this awful depression horse?” Go ahead. It is time to return. Baba died in 1963 and cannot hear you. Turn the key off in the ignition. You are back now where you belong. It is 2020 in the United States of America. Baba is sleeping in the graveyard now. You are being held hostage by a germ. Kick your shoes off now and think. Did you learn anything?