A Peek

You know that bit about
"You never know the world aright..."
Well, it's true--
Please, Please..
I know whereof I speak.
Take trees...
One summer
maybe 30 years ago
trees got very good to me
especially when I drove
the eight or ten miles to town
on clear lit up mornings.

So well I remember this:
I would wait for my favorite trees.
Really! I would hold my breath
and wait for them
and as I approached them
and as I passed...
well, it was like you feel
when the music you love best
reaches the part you love best
I mean bliss...
People, I mean a kind of ecstasy!

After that summer it was gone.
Trees were just...trees again.
Never once since
have they been anything but just trees.
It was as though one day
the most beautiful woman
in the world
is walking down the street
in a big fat heavy burlap skirt--
covered from head to foot
in this shapeless burlap burqa
which suddenly
as she walks over a sidewalk grate
gets all blown up above her waist
and you find out
that is ALL she is wearing!
She passes
the skirt falls
it is over.

And you spend
the rest of your life
hanging around that grate
and the woman
doesn't come .