HOW THE FUTURE EMERGES

How the future emerges

no need to document the exact second the day
leaps alive like a switch turned on —
all the world in synch. No need to connect
the dots as the alive sky races over Appalachian ridges,
somehow illuminates a cabin porch
where a six-year-old in yellow/gold light
babbles, her playful speech responding to directions
only she can hear, teaching (slow)
her future students what they need to know.
Simultaneously, light is the connection
three thousand miles further west
weaving weightless through Pacific shore
evolving clouds—
a teen dances on yellow rocks, sure a calm
master has arrived—who, in one gesture
will free an ancient logjam
in a timeless reach through chaos—
creating California art out of polished driftwood,
even as further east, two thousand miles inland
in the Great Middle, winds and weather come
from afar, an unencumbered front pushing
away big river stagnation, the day once
again open to possibility where
none before existed. Kids on bikes on
KC boulevards sensing possibility flying
with abandon, sure time is endless on
the knife-edge of speed.
For already light and clouds move quick
on a living map drifting north and east,
where a fourth-grader’s nervous story leaks on
a Chicago school stage. Tentative at first
in the spotlight acting out her ambitious drama,
her voice grows strong, a confident smile proves
her generation already is taking charge.
All contained in the quilt even further south
where a Florida sun slow-boils the park’s wet air.
A ball held high in a grandfather’s hand/
a boy standing poised and ready, holding
his kid’s glove like a pro. Sure the ball will
be thrown over and over, he crouches like a dog
ready to play. Slow motion, the release,
the seams revolving in golden light.

Taunt the Rattler

Once begun, the long maturing first inklings
are quickly forgotten in the mischievous rush
to preserve the sensuousness of days to come. Long
before anyone hands out names, every generation invents sex.
Before we know how to be sacred and still live in sin,
how could breathlessness be defined? Only in retrospect
are the first inklings remembered. Like the day Millie Ragsdale
came for us third grade boys in the lab school locker room
shared with the university PE class. Maybe because
teachers knew everything—Millie sensed we would be
standing agog, taking in college guys stripped to pubic hair,
asses, sweaty jock straps all a-kink on the floor.
Seeing with wide eyes what we would someday become.
Millie there to shield us from ugly exposure—
to guide us back to classroom seats, knowing how
boys grow wild, peering through the obscure
kinky door left wide open to the elements. No matter,
for at the time no merit badges were awarded for
graduating into newly mature landscapes. But somehow
sex was involved then, and two years later also
when the wind brought the river grit close,
and we taunted newcomer Chris, who had no right
to be so boy-cute, and the center of attention,
but not home-grown enough to fit in our jostling herd.
We tied him to a playground tree—taking turns
spitting on him. So fucking clever, we yelled,
“If you can’t handle this, go back to the circus.”
Until we were caught and forced to be reflective,
though the month-long afterschool punishment taught
us nothing. A year later Chris drifted down the river
flowing to the Gulf where all of eros began. By then
we were lost in new lands—so many dangerous
first looks/slow reveals/accepting the evolving
game-changing truth this hometown was not the center
of the world. Seventh grade innocence still real,
though hands sought out what they wanted, and everyone
everyday was naked/caught in the white Sunday School
light with no place to go but ahead. Comical how we
still turned red at the hint of exposure/but pushed on
anyway. Movie moments when the world washed
over, we were delirious in the wild evening winds.

While we danced

we tell the story we’ve memorized by heart,
we know when to insert facts and what emotions
are better left in our bodies.
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa in Poetry, Vol. 289, Number 1, Spring 2020, (p.13).

The black cat’s wide oval eyes memorized for long enough
the moving skin of our lives, not at all predictable
except in our monthly tragedies.
Years ago on a tramp round the vile haunts,
I discovered a kitten sleeping,
half-stupefied in a den of infamy. When
I reached to pet behind her ears she crawled close,
then readily came home, and for some time
pretended to be domesticated, much like my lover
who at the time latched on, insisted on sex
that hurt (me). Because pounding takes its toll,
soon enough time jumps, and rolls, with speedups
and voids until a narrative page turns over,
and both the cat and lover are gone.

Right now, I regret her absence, how she brushed against
my legs, as I recreate moments of peace,
relishing how so little happened in the lull before this
recent upheaval when the universe turned over,
insisting on concrete and concertina wire
to ward off explosions and bodies in the park.

In some different future we might well go back
and live by our animal names—mouse pig rat dog,
instead of hiding in camouflaged clothes,
creating little movies, then lurching from oblivion
cleaned up, ready to perform. In some
different future, eyes will focus enough to see
the dream’s stuffed carny animals again come alive.

But today, the awful quiet can’t stop the next
language assault, power games revealing some bully’s
great win. We have to learn again how to love,
knowing like Robert Creeley, it’s only a matter of miles.
That soon enough a mysterious smile will again
appear, ignorant about everything yesterday
we felt was real. But ready for more.

Mark Vogel lives at the back of a Blue Ridge holler with his wife, Susan Weinberg, an accomplished fiction, and creative non-fiction, writer, and two foster sons. He currently is an Emeritus Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Poems and short stories have appeared in several dozen literary journals.