Yesterday

Yesterday morning, while waiting, nursing a too-expensive latte, I read poems by Dylan Thomas from a worn paperback of English poetry that my friend, a poet, bought last weekend at an estate sale for ten cents. In the evening, at home, I listened to Bob Dylan while reading the stories behind the songs he wrote from 1962 to 1969, my years of fatherhood, divorce, and radicalism, rather than watching “The Voice,” my one and only fall into the slippery world of “reality television.” For a bit of balance, or maybe a jolt, although that’s not a good thing to do before bedtime, I stirred in whiplash verses from e.e. cummings before I took my pills and turned down the volume in my head for the night.