I Am but a Dazzling Day

I Am but a Dazzling Day

 

Remembering How the Last Days of My Innocence

Were Lived Out, Sleeping and Dreaming Freely

In the Foothills Near San Francisco, California

 

Remembering, Too, How the Age of Aquarius

Was a Momentarily Wholesome State of Mind

 

That Could Not Last Very Long

Because It Was Too Fantastical

And Contrary to Human Nature.

 

A cable car clangs in the wharf, and there, all men are free

To scatter in the gold of day and gather all they see

 

I am the boy who spreads the news, God's newborn amity;

I am a giver of the gold, the reason men are free

 

The year is nineteen sixty-nine; the sun is loud and bright;

And I am but a dazzling day that knows not of the night.

 

-P-

 

Wytheville: A Half-Century of Smelling Good

 

But there were many wonderful American towns in the 1960s, the most beautiful of which was Wytheville, Virginia. I was there only two days �" broke and sleeping in a municipal park - Or, maybe it was just someone’s empty lot. But it smelled good, and I was comfortable sleeping there. Good things can also be said for the townspeople I encountered while waiting on the arrival of money at Western Union. They smelled like flowers and one of them gave me a fruit pie before I left. About 50 years later, I drove through Wytheville on the way back from visiting my daughter in Pennsylvania. It looked a lot different, but the people smelled just as good, even minus the fruit pie.