8 August 05
Lunchtime
Riding home at lunch, which is absurd since it’s really only a seven minute walk, doesn’t give me time for much musing or anything else; occasionally a three-line poem will flash into my head and the key then is to make sure I remember it when I get to where I’m going.
On Friday, though, I rode into campus. It was very hot. The smell of the California bay trees mixed with warm pine needles. It’s so intoxicating I almost forget where I’m going and keep on the bike path that will give me more of this.
A juvenile ground squirrel darts in front of me, tail high in a warning banner. The horses in the field are clustered in the shade of the lone cottonwood. The wild grapes are opulent lime green this year. Four plum tomatoes, spilled from a truck that was taking the corner too fast, lie in the bike path like poison easter-eggs. The slow freight train creaks over the tracks, in less of a hurry than I. The smell of trains—wood and oil and smoke and timber and—what—iron? rust?—clatters southwest.
I see fewer magpies now.
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Pica, there’s an AP item in the paper this morning that might have a solution for your poetry problem. A Ypsilanti cheerleading squad happened to witness a minor hit-and-run accident in Ann Arbor. Their coach got the offender’s license number and yelled it and “Remember this!” to the squad, who began reciting it “and then it just turned into a big chant,” said a senior captain. Hey, turning info into a cheer… ya use what tools ya got.
If the technique spreads, it could have interesting aesthetic effects on the streets of Davis.