This week I’ve had these eerie premonitions
(I really need to say my mantram a few thousand times to Sri Anandamayi Ma)
“Eerie” because of my selfishness
Premonitions that you will be going to San Francisco for the next four+ years of your life and it’s only 2057 miles from here
“Eerie” & disorienting & gotta catch my breath
(“Is there a doctor in the house?”)
Because soon there’ll be no opportunity for
Walking with you in the Central West End
Eating at bistros
Revealing and reveling about reading & writing
And simply seeing your face
And something inside me sinks …
But there you were tonight
Didi to all these academic, pre-med youngsters
You, so serene, so wise, so cool
To come to an event that probably most 4th years would find inconceivable
But why shouldn’t you come
Since you too are a poet
(With a blog to prove it to the entire world wide web)
Since you too have traveled here and there
And had your heart split open one way or another
By people whose struggle and dignity put so many of us to shame
Since you too are a chef and a should-be nationally certified connoisseur of chocolate
And I have my darshan of you sitting across the room
Reading aloud a Creole translated poem
Listening with ekāgratā to what people are saying
And this after a long’s day’s work
After three and a half long years of effort
And something inside of me savors…
