Paris, a dream smeared across the mindscreen,
a memory decades in the making,
remember when I found my father's books
in fourth grade in a box with reel-to-reel
sound recordings of primary lessons.
After four years high school, three years college...
Distance makes the scholar study harder,
reading magazines and writing journals,
entering third year Advanced French Grammar
arriving in Memphis after madness
made me reassess my bad decisions.
Spring Break 1996, we travelled
midnight express across the Atlantic,
ending up napping on an empty plane
across four seats with the flight attendant
requesting we relax until morning,
entering Paris with turbulent sleep,
decided to read Seamus Heaney's speech.
After very little sleep, we arrived
city bright to stay with my roommate's friend,
receiving hospitality with cheese,
old, hard bread, table wine, a place to stay,
sleep, shower, drink coffee out of small bowls,
stayed up all day to decide logistics.
That I would stay with another family,
happily able to use a language
entirely learned within a classroom.
Maybe if I wasn't so high-minded,
if we didn't begin to drift apart,
nothing that two philosophy students
dependent on hard argumentation
skills can't resolve, but another friend brought
clear across the Atlantic from the sticks,
riding along after his bride bailed out,
entering Paris with no language skills,
even a good ol' boy from Tennessee
needs time out to talk with an old buddy.
No comments:
Post a Comment