Common Sense - Ted Greenwald Wesleyan Poetry Series

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the one I did

      Where I’d learned

      Different social graces

      Than the ones I have

      Where some of the material

      Values of the American dream

      Had rubbed off

      Enough to make me

      Live it out

      In the good-works sense

      If I’d settled down

      And settled

      For the foundation

      On a house

      For future generations

      Instead of assuming

      Immediately past generations

      My foundation to mine

      If I’d been

      A little quicker to learn

      What was expected of me

      And wanting to please pleased

      Going on that way

      Through all eternity

      Fve probably been saved

      From mere routines

      By a streak of stubbornness

      By a slow mind

      And tendency to drift

      By an emotional development

      That requires

      My personal understanding

      Before happening

      Feeling out the implications

      An emotion has in

      Form of expectation

      Before trying out and

      After awareness

      I sense a willingness

      To tell someone

      I know and like

      And sense the same from

      Anything they’d like to know

      About me

      And, at the same time, have

      A vast sense of privacy

      Which means

      There’s no way

      I’ll wear out my personality

      And its sense of continuity

      Although sometimes

      I feel empty

      But talking to

      Someone I like

      And trust

      And sense the same from

      I feel way up

      And after a long evening

      Of talk about this and that

      Feel wide awake

      And feel the world

      Wide and awake around me

      And have a visual intensity

      In memory

      That, in near memory, dulls

      And throbs

      And grows vivid as hell

      When I bring it to mind

      Some time from then

      What my life

      Would’ve been like

      Under different circumstances

      WouldVe been different

      With its own

      Attendant ifs

      And its own what-might’ve-been

      But this way

      Fve elected to follow

      And cast my vote

      Each waking day in

      I avoid

      The possibility

      Of taking the past too seriously

      Or feeling any bitterness

      Or sadness

      This way

      When my ship comes in

      FHVe passed out of mind

      Beyond the sight of land

      And won’t hesitate

      For a second

      To look back on all this

      With fondness or remiss

      The air’ll be clear

      The moon’ll be there

      And you, whoever

      You are and hope to be,

      Will be here with my love

      FOG ROLLED IN

      fog rolled in

      drink rolled down

      water towers

      cars sixteen floors down (night)

      wind in, cool off the room

      seen The Quiet Man (homeric)

      my brain feels homeric in its dawning

      Joan up in Ithaca (my arms cool)

      reading at Holly’s a week from tonight

      readings reel in my brain

      plans reel in my brains

      to marry Joan (secretly of course)

      to set up our house (better wishes bad feelings

      cautions lay to rest) a place to live for two people

      life a subtheme

      drink cooling my throat, a new notebook underway

      the night in place

      the night in a place in my heart in my doubts

      my fingers itch (for what) I

      loosen them, the self

      rests in the night it is asleep now this poem

      is awake underneath the poem is a dream soon

      the dream will be all over

      P.S.

      Enormously difficult

      To explain exactly

      How I feel

      Clearing my brain

      After seeing

      Where I’m going

      After resting

      After taking care of this and that

      For another round of works

      Finished one thing

      Found a solid voice

      (Temporary, I’m sure)

      Time to lean back

      And think about life

      Roughly halfway over

      (Over what? Water?)

      Very little

      In the way of theory

      Cropping up (like grass)

      More and

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