DOING MY THING
It’s my usual camera trick
I have your image
before you hear the click.
While in your ears
your iPod sing
and everybody walking along
is doing their thing.
A stray hair blows in the wind
a hand to put it right
it’s not going to stay in place
no matter how you fight.
A dog looks up as if to say,
“What’s now boss
what’s new today?”
This is my usual walk around treat
watching people seems so neat.
So look your best
all shinny and slick
because you can’t escape
my camera’s click
and while in your ear
your cell phone will ring
watch out for me ‘cause
I’m
doing my thing.
©Copyright March 7, 2008 by John-Ward Leighton
Photograph ©Copyright by John-Ward Leighton
Author’s Note: The page wrinkles from ink drying from the hastily scrawled lines. The clean white page the poet must despoil. The clean white page is a provocation, something he must decorate with comments both profane and inane. It’s a dare that is always answered because an empty page is death. Even if the writing is significant or frivolous the written page says I was here even if I'm gone and more than a song on the wind it can be seen again and gain new meaning in the imagination of every new reader.
So there is always the challenge of the clean white page. When the book is closed and the poet gone, I paraphrase a fellow poet, Leonard Cohen, "There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in."