We had clouds again today.  These aren't the same photos as yesterdays.  I still didn't see lightening and I didn't hear thunder; but I imagined it, which is almost the same as seeing and hearing the storm.

I went looking today for the poem I’ve temporarily lost, and didn’t find it.  I found instead something I wrote on Tuesday, December 31, 1990. I tried to remember what might have been going on in my life on that day.  I hadn’t retired yet and was still doing that four-letter-word thing called work, and I would have been getting ready to go back to school after the mid-winter break. I wasn’t a classroom teacher and hadn’t been one for many years, but I never lost the joy of that profession.  It was rekindled in me again today when I saw youngsters in my neighborhood going back to school.  LIFE IS GOOD!

WHAT HAT SHALL I WEAR

Must I choose today

what part I shall play,

Which lines I shall say?

Will anyone care

what hat I shall wear?

I shall grow up

if I have to at all

to be seven feet tall

and shoot balls off a wall

or I may just decide to stay young as a pup.

I’d really like to be a plumber

or in a choir the official hummer

or in a band the only drummer.

Give me a chance to make noise.

I can’t be quiet like the good little boys.

Instead of peaceful homophony

I prefer a little cacophony

and an occasional break with good heterophony

and sweet simple jazz

with razzmatazz.

I think I’d like to climb a mountain 

or even perhaps design a fountain.

I could be a mannequin

or better yet, a paladin

or maybe a wildly roving Taliesin.

If I could only be a judge,

I’d search out and sentence every drudge

and try to give a little nudge

to silly twits who’ve chosen monotony

when all the while they could have selected botany.

I’d like to travel to Mars

then write my memoirs

and stay out from behind bars

unless, of course, for a cause that’s right

I stand my ground and put up a fight.  

I confess some interest in a life that is wicked

as long as in front of crowds I don’t have to get naked.

If possible I’d like to be outrageous

in ways that are generally courageous

without ever seeming the least bit umbrageous.

But what a joy to be a teacher

an indispensable creature

whose most essential feature

is a willingness to change,

is a willingness to change.