Indolence.

IN MICHIGAN

1

Here like the tropics
in summer
in the forest, in the lake
or where the forest ends
a desert of dry grass and stones
over dirt roads, the heat
making you one with
the air
and thus not being one
separate
from that which surrounds you

You rise in the early morning
and for an hour
feel yourself
the boy again
in love with summer
the heat, the baking sun
the indolence of planning
nothing for tomorrow.

2
I never know
my father as a young man
forty-four when I was born
fifty as young as I remember him
but in the brown photgraphs
from "the Great War"
he is young, younger than I
and he calls me back
         a dream that couldn't escape
the businessman
who rose every dawn
to his last years

Dan Gerber