Slow
Tryon & MLK (3 Wells Fargo)
by Cathy Smith Bowers
I like the joke about the snail
who mugged the turtle
who when asked by policemen
to recount the sequence of events
couldn’t because it all happened so fast.
It’s the only joke I know,
the one I always preface--Stop me
if you’ve heard it—though friends
who love me crack up each time, slap
each other on the back,
and laugh themselves to tears.
I want a life that slow.
Like George, the idiot savant,
who couldn’t spell his name
or count to ten, but could remember
for the talk-show host, the weather
of any day she named—her high school
graduation, Pearl Harbor,
the day the Rosenbergs were killed.
I’ll tell you the truth, he would begin,
the year washing slowly back, cresting,
sweet wave against his tongue,
the little ark of months and days
come to rest on Ararat. June 7, 1959.
Warm and sunny that one was, and then,
the wreck of his old hand rising toward the sky,
The truth I’ve told will get me into heaven.
from Traveling in Time of Danger (Iris Press, 1999)
I like the joke about the snail
who mugged the turtle
who when asked by policemen
to recount the sequence of events
couldn’t because it all happened so fast.
It’s the only joke I know,
the one I always preface--Stop me
if you’ve heard it—though friends
who love me crack up each time, slap
each other on the back,
and laugh themselves to tears.
I want a life that slow.
Like George, the idiot savant,
who couldn’t spell his name
or count to ten, but could remember
for the talk-show host, the weather
of any day she named—her high school
graduation, Pearl Harbor,
the day the Rosenbergs were killed.
I’ll tell you the truth, he would begin,
the year washing slowly back, cresting,
sweet wave against his tongue,
the little ark of months and days
come to rest on Ararat. June 7, 1959.
Warm and sunny that one was, and then,
the wreck of his old hand rising toward the sky,
The truth I’ve told will get me into heaven.
from Traveling in Time of Danger (Iris Press, 1999)
