things you realize when you're too busy to think

Over the last say 30 years I'll occasionally recall something stupid my undergrad poetry professor said, but then I forget about it. It's not like I despised him as a professor, I looked up to him. But really. In one poem I spoke of the stars wheeling through the sky and he literally winced when he read it and said something about how everyone knows the stars don't move. Jesus. No more than the sun does but that doesn't stop you from using words like "sunset" and "the sun is out." They moved relative to the narrator, asshole.  And the cliff, and the trees, and the witless unseen stream  nestled in shadowy scrub 50 feet below.

 And I wrote a poem about a dream I had (ok just because you dream it doesn't mean it's a good poem, given), where Harry Kerry was announcing everything I did-- and Prof said no one would really be named that. There was no google at the time, and I did spell the name wrong. But come on, even if you don't understand astronomy and relativity, at least you could fucking understand baseball, right?

Mr. PuddyToddy

He's just a stupid smiling little flexible kid's toy crossing guard with no hat left and nothing in his right fist for 26 years since Jesse found it in the freebies box at some yard sale and his face lit up as he clutched it to his 2 year old chest and said, "MOMMY! It's Mr. PuddyToddy!" And I find it on the floor this morning and I cry and cry. I will probably be crying most of the day, on and off. And I don't care. Why shouldn't I cry. I will never throw that stupid  toy away. I will never forget that on that day, Jesse and I were happy, happy with life and each other, and he had put the soul of one of his three imaginary friends into this little blue wire-boned discarded bit of idiot-faced plastic. And Jesse kept it all these years, so I would find it today and realize that he really did remember.