Mementos: Tribe Pride

Driving to have dinner with some friends.
I stop at the red light.
A tan car pulls up beside me and honks.
Confused, I look over.
Young man excitedly motions me to roll down my windows.
Confused, I do.

"TRIBE PRIDE!" he yells as he fist-pounds me mid-air
I laugh, returning the gesture, realizing he saw the bumper sticker
"What year?!" I yell across the passenger side.
"DINWIDDIE 2004!"
"FAUQUIER 2012!"
"Ooohh~Fauuuuuuquier"
"Looks like we both got stuck in Botetourt!"
"TRIBE PRIDE!"
Grinning, we both drive away

Feeling more at home in this dry desert tonight.
Refreshed to know that this stranger
understands the grassy field I once frolicked across
with memories linked to mine.

Two souls meet at a stoplight.
Yes, indeed.
Tribe pride.

Sometimes

Forty-Seven Minutes

Nick Flynn, 1960

Years later I’m standing before a roomful of young writers in a high school in Texas. I’ve asked them to locate an image in a poem we’d just read—their heads at this moment are bowed to the page. After some back & forth about the grass & a styrofoam cup, a girl raises her hand & asks, Does it matter? I smile—it is as if the universe balanced on those three words & we’ve landed in the unanswerable. I have to admit that no, it doesn’t, not really, matter, if rain is an image or rain is an idea or rain is a sound in our heads. But, I whisper, leaning in close, to get through the next forty-seven minutes we might have to pretend it does.

Mementos

Saturday afternoon /
mom's chopping veggies /
i ask her opinion on a playlist for my cousin

me: how about this?
plays song on iTunes
mom listens intently
mom: ...hrm I like that "car race" song
me: ....you mean "chasing cars"?
mom: ... ^^;