Week of July 19, 2026
Sunday
Poem 1
The Day Embraces Me
A glaze of rain beads the pavement in front of the house.
Blades of grass swivel individually on the breeze.
It ripples my T-shirt and tickles my skin underneath.
The day embraces me.
All the days and ways my life has been
say hello to me now—they say hello.
The glory of the Earth.
I don’t know what comes next,
but the glory of life on Earth.
Sunup, sundown,
the moon on the river,
how the world has been.
I think of love, twilight, the hand of God,
the steady breeze: The breath of nature.
Tiger lilies are pretty this year,
growing in the ditches, here and there wherever they want.
Now, I am rinsing dishes, and I think of when I said this
to that friend I had in San Francisco,
And of that apartment I had
and how I didn’t treat the landlord just right,
wrangling in fits of neurosis about little things.
What I demanded didn’t make it better—or worse.
Fits of neurosis.
What the hell! Grow up!
I said to this friend I had in San Francisco:
I said that a friend gave my brother LSD,
and now he’s a little off the track.
Who isn’t a little off the track?
I was a purist; I didn’t want any drugs.
I was afraid of them.
My celiac disease already made me half crazy.
That’s what the experts say, half crazy
from undiagnosed celiac disease.
Because of poor absorption and the inflammation.
Two businesses away from my building
I always saw that gay guy I recognized from the baths—
in those days, we went to baths.
Somewhat short in stature but athletic, muscular.
He had a steady job in a magazine distribution warehouse.
The big, rollup door was open most of the time,
and I saw him always tossing around big bundles of popular
magazines tied with those white nylon twisted-up ribbons
that serve as strings.
Steady job—I liked the idea because I didn’t have one that I cared about,
or that paid enough money.
What we think about when we’re rinsing dishes.
Toy with the past.
It was a life lived,
not too bad after all.
Tiger Lilies
johnbattle1.blog 