Then You Begin
I’ll never forget that rainy day
I wore my Scout uniform to school
not knowing our meeting was cancelled.
Those were halcyon days before
group text messages and reverse 911s.
So there I sat in the cafeteria, the one lone
webelo in my pressed shirt with
kerchief round my neck, ashamed.
How did everyone else know but me?
Kids can be killingly cruel. They were.
I earned the invisible badge of longsuffering
that day that took its own sweet time.
I later learned that to be a fruit of the Spirit,
a virtue that makes us like God.
But in grade school you want nothing
more than to be like everyone else.
And you can, until someone forgets you.
Then you begin to become someone else.
Exactly.
Yes. And, a thought … wisdom to pass on to my grandchildren as they experience the pangs of growing into the later years.
Awesome. Really connected with this.
Kind Regards,
Nathan Johnson (719) 243-4299
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[…] From John Blase (whose poetry you should be reading, and whose letters to Winn you should also be reading): I’ll never forget that rainy day I wore my Scout uniform to school not knowing our meeting was cancelled. Those were halcyon days before group text messages and reverse 911s. […]
JOHN —
I was much taken by your poem about the Scouts. I spent a couple of years as the lone Webelo myself, even when I was with the others and they had on their uniforms, too. I had forgotten those days. These are days of becoming something else for me, though not necessarily someone else, I am too old for that now. But these are surely days for my learning to live and move through the world in some new ways that had never occurred to me. I think your poem did two good things that good writing does : It opened a window into my back pages and then opened a window for me to see what might come next. Thank you, sir. Aside from the fact that you thought of scribbling ‘the lone webelo’ before I did, something I will be mildly angry at you for until I can no longer pick up a pen, I am very happy you made the thing. Do good. Namasté, et a bientôt —
R. Benson rbstudio2@mac.com / 615.720.6838