Around Lafayette Reservoir


1
Ah, California, with your paved-path wilderness
a mile down the road from Peets! This morning
I got on the merry-go-round, joined the parade:
joggers, walkers, skaters, bikers, people with dogs
and babies; talkers on the phone, perfume of sunscreen,
masses of walkers with walkmen —even two people,
faces deep in books, whose feet somehow
keep finding their way every step.

2
Something has changed since I last came here,
fifteen years ago. Back then, I tried to greet
each person going by, crossing at times
some microscopic line into flirtation,
judging savagely whomever refused
to respond with wave or word or friendly look.
Now a married man, secure in my domestic world,
my soul’s content to swim within its reservoir
of solitude. I send greeting glances out,
without as much concern that they come back.
Halfway around the lake, a couple I know is walking
their dog. The husband can’t shake hands, the leash
in one of his, a cup of Starbucks in the other.

3
When someone passes me—in this case not a jogger, even, just
a guy with longer strides—there's still the same chagrin and shame
I always felt, in spite of knowing what I should have felt.
Vestigial instinct leaves me feeling that I've lost a race.
But what’s that up ahead? An old man
who's been in front of me the whole way—he jogs awhile,
walks, then jogs again—has stopped and left the path to pee.
I pass him with a surge of glee
like a miler crossing a finish line:
How strange it is, the human mind!

4
Finished with my two point seven miles, I sit
upon a bench and write, watching them come and go,
these figures for a modern “Sunday in the Park with George.”
The geese honk, water ripples, and the breeze blows
gently on my cheek. Down on the concrete bank
four unkempt, red-beaked vultures are strutting
almost too ironically, as if to say, “This too shall pass!”
Reminded of passing time, I glance over toward the meter
by my car. Its blotch of red informs me that, indeed, it has!

                                       —Max Reif