cover photo: stephan mazurek
I Wanted
To Grow Up
by
Lisa Vihos
I
wanted to grow up to be a poet.
The
burly, mountain-man kind of poet
with
a thick beard and a wild look in my eye.
I
would wear torn jeans and flannel shirts
with
sleeves rolled up over thermal underwear.
I
would not be a drunkard.
Every
morning, I would rise before the sun
and
make a pot of coffee, then, to work.
When
words failed me, I’d split wood, take a bath.
Now
and then, I would journey to small colleges
up
and down the coast, reading and teaching
on
dappled sunlit afternoons in ancient classrooms
that
smell of dust and youth; the brawls of academia
unable
to mar my poet’s wings. I’d be a paragon
of
dedication to my craft.
I
would revel in the great and small, the misfit
and
the misbegotten. I would sift through words
like
jelly beans, roll them across my tongue
and
place them ever so gently in your ear
where
they might work their way down into
your
solar plexus, taking hold of your digestion.
My
rugged good looks would light my way
and
without knowing how, I’d generally end my day
with
someone’s legs wrapped around my back.
But
my loneliness would be deep
and
wide as the ocean. No lover’s croon
could
ever keep me still or match the call
of
the Sirens waiting for me on the rocks.
Me,
chained to my mast, drenched in their song,
words
dripping from me like sweat.
~
first appeared in A Brief History of Mail
(Pebblebrook Press)
