My Own Little Anthem.

Today I have done some Christmas shopping.
It is now the late afternoon and I have decided to hit the freeway and drive here to a Chapters/Starbucks that I rarely ever visit. It is bustling with the sounds of commerce. The Christmas music is in full blare, interspersed with the occasional little blast of U2 or Louis Armstrong. Starbucks like to really mix it up. I don’t mind the eclectic mix so much, but I do wish they would tone it down a notch.
I am sitting at this one bench style desk-affair (oooh, more U2 overhead), and it seats four, one extra person is even at the oblong end there, so we are at full capacity. The guy next to me (as I glance over) is doing some sort of mathematical formulation that looks so complex it is making me dizzy.
These two “yoots” (to quote Joe Pesci from the movie My Cousin Vinny) just sat down, opposite me. He went to get some coffees while she pulled a book entitled On Acting by Sanford Meisner out of a backpack and immediately started reading it at about midpoint. Now he has sat down next to her and is also reading something, hiding the title from me because he may be on to the fact that I am writing about the both of them. Anyway, I just love to see two people reading together, and that is the only reason I am mentioning it. Because I love it so much.
Today is my birthday.
I have turned 24.
Whoopsie daisy! Bit of a dyslexic moment there!
If you switch those two digits around, it is much closer to the musical truth.

So it is that I think of the following poem, today being the 42nd anniversary of the first stanza's subject matter.
I wrote this thing about two years ago.
Several people who have read it have afterwards just sort of levelled a blank stare at me and suggested with their silent eyes that I perhaps could use some Vitamin B12 supplements.
Yet, to me, it is one of the favorite pieces I have ever written.
Maybe by next December I will have done something better, to displace this little thing as my own personal anthem.
But as for now, it is.

Diameter

There exists a precise area on this planet
the exact length of a sputtering infant
where tiny lungs drew for the first time
air, and I was born.

Forty years later I seek its diametric opposite,
the furthest earthly point from that first breath.

Perhaps it falls upon the ocean.
I float there, and as I pass the spot
rest my hand on the black surface,
look up at the stars and imagine
my life a sword that splits the world in two.

Perhaps it is a terraced plot of dirt.
An aged farmer quietly tills his garden
while I kneel and grip the soil,
look up and try to impress upon him
the importance of this little row of beans.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2005