Wayne would sit in front of the class

and tell us how it was to be afraid of death.

We called him the Mescaline Man

and not even behind his back. Before Wayne,

I thought mescaline was a bitter lettuce

I didn’t like. But Wayne made it seem fun

and then, not as fun. The ghosts he still saw,
 
the lost feeling on his left side, one leg

hanging from the stool two inches shorter than the other.

This was the way with adults then, with their slow

cautionary drums — the real dangers not yet ours to know. 
Under the power lines drinking warm beers

I felt it too. At the top of the world, the pulse

of electricity at my feet, a buzz that kept the world
 
moving, people going where they needed to go.

And there I was, standing still, listening to the hum

of my body in the late summer grass. 

    Kim Kent is our poet in Residence for October.


    Previously: See you Later, Grapefruit, and Just for Tonight, Walking Home in Rain.