The Malice of Chalk

Richard K. Ostrander

I wish to say nothing about the meaning of life,
About how we go through days 
Like flipping through pages of a magazine
In the waiting room of the doctor’s office.
About how we wear memory
Like an initiate wears his chalice around his thigh.
How leaves at the edges of the porch gather 
In legislative quorums; 
Maples in their filibuster against the long leaf pine.
How we never bothered to count all the blades 
Of grass mowing the lawn each week.
I would start at the edges and do the outside
Then starting at the top of the hill
Work on down in straight lines like a tablet.
Or how while married, I folded my own clothes,
Laying each one flat on the kitchen table.
How I would stay late at the office
Until the last minute before shift work at home.
Of all the “if onlys” like sparrows on the power line.
After all the sphinx like hours in Mrs. Tamiko’s class
The shine of her long black hair a waterfall against
The malice of chalk she scratched on the black board;
Her algebra more foreign then next hour’s Latin.
If I had only switched sides with steve’o,
He wouldn’t have gotten a purple heart.
How the where of the why is never where we look.
How meaning is inevitably meaningless.
But no, what we make of meaning
Because definitions by definition define.
Mrs. Tamiko would look back at me in disgust,
Her porcelain face cracking at my nodding head,
Not knowing this was the lingua franca I found.
How at fifteen I would wash myself in her hair
My hips convulsing in the night after class.