The Ride

I wake up and I say:

Today, I will have an experience.

It will be good and bad, generally in succession,

But sometimes simultaneously,

Since men are complicated things.

Some of it I will be responsible for,

In ways I do or do not understand,

But other things will come to me at random,

And I will deal with them gracefully,

Or clumsily, depending on my mood.

My experience will overlap with other peoples’–

Because we all occupy the same world –

And sometimes, if I keep my eyes open,

I will glimpse what someone else is going through,

And he may likewise get a glimpse of me.

For the most part, though, it happens to me alone,

This fourteen-hour experience of things,

And most of it I’ll forget before my head hits the pillow,

But some of it may linger for the rest of my life.

In any case, it will be an experience,

And it will end in sleep, like so many before,

And tomorrow I’ll get up and have a different experience –

Though not completely different –

And so on, till no more.

It’s natural to have feelings about it –

In fact, that’s very much a part of the thing –

But silly to give it too much importance.

It washes over you; it’s gone; you’re gone.