Monday, April 30, 2007

a long life, a balanced diet

on a rainy day i saw
disquieting mountaintops grumbling something
to my stomach about mortality.
"if i was going to live forever
i wouldn't smoke cigarettes,"
you explained, sick in bed
with strep throat and oatmeal. it
reminded me of my mother who
had taught me strict definitions
of nutrition, though i think
those definitions have changed. maybe
the food pyramid is 3-dimensional now,
a 2-dimensional pyramid can
only say so much, like photographs of
the countryside which are very nice but
after a while fall flat.
I met a man with a flat liver,
"i wish i wasn't an alcoholic. i used to
think i'd live forever," he said but
he only drank a glass of
red wine a day so i didn't
believe him. i once decided
to try nature photography, i
was going to hike up a mountain but
it had been raining and i thought of
erosion, wondering if the mountain would be
flat one day but the trail was
steep, slippery and wet so i went home. You were
feeling better and you
bummed me a cigarette.