It’s not all gravy.
I mean, there’s a lot of gravy,
but it’s lumpy in spots,
maybe too salty here and there.
I have yet to develop a routine, for example.
I meander into each day,
like a drifter in my own life.
I have more time to think
about pain, where its coming from,
what aggravates it, how or if
it will ever go away.
This stupid knee.
And I have time for
the occasional morbid thought:
How long do I have to live?
Mostly I wonder why
everyone else is always
so incredibly busy.
They seem to always be
speeding by in a blur,
a whirlwind of activity.
Sometimes I find myself
interrupting my wife at work:
“What are you doing?”
I’m not traveling or
vacationing to exotic places.
I’ve barely left the yard.
But don’t get me wrong.
Most of the time I feel
as if I’m getting away
with murder. It feels
too good to be true.
Even though
there are moments
of disappointment, a feeling
like I am not doing enough
for my health or my heart,
but I finished a memoir.
I have drafted two novels.
I have drafted two books of poems.
I have recorded and released
an album. Holy shit,
am I ever not sitting on my ass.
A friend of mine and I
were having this talk and
I told him that my only
impulses these days
are to create things
and love people,
which is not entirely true.
But these seem to be
my purest impulses,
my best angels,
and I’m just having every
once in a while to
bat those other impulses
away, like alcohol or
longing, envy, anxiety.
Mostly, I’m better than okay.
I don’t miss working, per se,
but I miss the hubbub,
and the community,
and certain transcendent
classroom moments,
but it’s beginning to fog,
to seem almost like a dream,
or a life lived by someone
who was not me.
Almost two years of retirement
feels a little bit
like the beginning of one
more life than the one
promised by that Mary Oliver
poem–what do I want
to do with it? That’s still
the operative question
and I think I am on to something.
michael jarmer 