Waiting

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.