Some days I think

I’ve learned

I don’t call it mastery

I don’t call it

Quiet, though

takes effort

Practice perseverance

Resistance restraint

Breathing at precisely the moment

my mouth opens to utter some advice

Coughing works, too

though noiseless is my preferred mode

Hold steady to the Present

I want to say to sorrowful suffering worriers

It’s no platitude

I am a true believer

Ask me

Yet here I am on this rainy Sunday

digging through a box of cassette tapes

Stories without labels

Chapters with broken plot lines

Their players lost or names misremembered

Escaped from out of necessity

Dead

And this one of a whole radio show

I sit cross legged in my present moment

listen close to my heartbeat

deciding how its rhythm jives with evidence

another me existed

in another time with another voice

Crackling through radio waves

telling stories it seems I knew well

A voice of youth and confidence

Reverence for music

I am not yet sure I want to meet her

sip any of that Was medicine

or revisit messages sent through the tunes

she played for ears she imagined might

be listening for choice cuts from the radio

Stalled here in the present past unable to say

either hello old friend or please just go away