i show professor my latest series of poems. he frowns. i know him by now. it’s a frown of now we’re getting there, but we’re not there yet. it’s okay, i like the journey. i wouldn’t know what to do with myself if i ever got there. wherever there may be. i’ve set a course to destination anywhere, and i have good company for the journey.

marcy, colin, antoinette, and i make ourselves comfy in primo’s, a little coffee shop near campus. we settle in with our over-priced, but oh-so-worth-it lattes, and talk about that, then this, and maybe a little this, than that. we’re just like “friends” without the script.

i’m not good at description. i’ve thought about colin, how to convey the essence of him. it occurs to me that i don’t know the essence. i do know the superficial. he moves like an athlete, like a baseball player, with grace. i don’t suppose that helps. he’s tall without being tall, a solid body without being imposing or threantening. he has the longish blonde/brown hair of a rock star, without the generally accompanied arrogance. i’m circling what i mean to say. he’s handsome. if he were a little prettier he could be a model for armani. he’s just right. 

if i were to drift into supposition, i would suppose he was prone to solitary walks in which he thinks about his life, where’s he going, where’s he been, about the meaning of it, knowing there is no meaning beyond what he ascribes to it; thinking about girls he has known, biblically and otherwise, girls, women, he will know. but this is mere guesswork. on the surface he’s serious, not quick to smile, but, of course, when he does it’s charming. naturally so. 

marcy is the yin to his yang, yet, and i know this for a fact, they aren’t together. whatever magic that causes two people to know, hasn’t happened. i’m only stating a fact, not passing judgment. maybe they tried it on and it didn’t fit. could be. they are friends, i know that. they do a lot of stuff together, like taking nathaniel camping up at point reyes, and going to concerts and movies and hiking together. it’s nice when opposites can be good friends. it says something good about possibilities, about humanity.

marcy is even harder to know. 

i don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my friends’ exterior or inner-character. i’m trying to teach myself how be more descriptive, to use adjectives, in compliance with professor eliot's directive. adjectives have always seemed unnecessary, cluttering, to me. things are. take them at face value until proven otherwise. i can’t see it matters if colin's hair is blonde or has an afro out to tomorrow. but, professor eliot has chastised me, or hinted, that i often assume too much of the reader, that they follow my every twist of thought, that they are in my head with me as i make my way through a story, that they see what i see. he says the reader needs guidance. 

he has me read robert frost’s The Road Not Taken, which is a poem most of us read somewhere along the line, in high school at least. i’ve learned the meaning of a poem changes with each reading, so i'm happy to read it again. he has me jot down the adjectives, suggesting they pass unnoticed, yet add dimension and quality to the poem. he asks me to read the poem with and without the adjectives. 

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

~~~

i write an essay, examining every adjective in the poem in detail, how each is used, what each is meant to convey, and what each does convey. i read the poem both ways, there is no comparison. without adjectives it becomes a narrative he might tell his coffee buddies down at the local dinner.  

game, set, match to professor eliot. once again he has opened my sultry, brown eyes.

~~~

warm breezes have been on my mind lately. i think i'll write a poem, or try to write a poem, that does what The Road Not Taken does, convey more than the facts, rather, convey a mood. and while this conveying of mood is hardly new to me or my writing, the deliberateness may be. i hope it comes off as unforced.

~~~

here and there

the telltale tells the tale

lifting from the stay

as a freshening breeze pops the luff 

from the slack sails

i hear the first hiss of a bow wake

and settle into the heel

a light hand on the chromed wheel

we cut the whitecapped waves at half a ninety

make it 45 degrees

to the southwest, destination anywhere

then we run before the tropic wind

dropping the jib, raising the spinnaker with a snap!

the primary colours bouncing against the blue and blue

of sea and sky 

and we sail

and my heart rejoices

as i walk to campus in the chilly morning air

for i am here and there

exactly where i want to be

~~~

all of this makes me very happy