unsolicited advice

unsolicited advice
 
 
Dear brooding pre-adolescent sharing the path, crouching
so small under those impossibly many folds of dark
fabric, shrouded and stifled by a certain Coolness
as demonstrated by your glinting shades and grimace--
 
Allow the sun to touch you.
 
There is much to what the difference can be between you
and me. My feet have already left their shaking path on by,
pounding off in the opposite direction. You linger, poised
and dark in the light, your face averted, down.
 
So now I'm assuming, all. None of this is verifiable.
But in particular, say you are about 12, to my 24.
The difference between you and me is you again.
 
Simple math, but shifting -- shadow sums. For as we
together age, this will dance with us, changing
but always binding us in our relations. For you,
I represent a doubling of chances, twice the luck.
 
And disappointment, perhaps, and hardship.
And sound, as I come bearing down, thundering,
an aggressive force of movement and brightness,
refractions glaring off my body, splintering light
 
breaking through your wished-for solemnity and quiet.
 
And you? I don't know you.
Your slight half of me could be twice
whatever scope I can now imagine.
You seem cold, even in your hoodie.
The rest is conjecture.
 
Enter light, a blessing of a late October day,
a necessary foil to our seasonal obsession
with death, and the starkness, the horrible
dryness of bones.
 
A damp pile of fallen leaves glistening
in the gutter, already turning to soil,
speaks as much to the calamity of living
as it does to a requisite mortality, to any tragedy of fate.
 
Sweat a little, move your young limbs, run. Shout, dammit.
Shout to be heard. Shout because you can, and
a little because you should not. Shout for sunshine,
after the liminal grayness of rain, the indifference of chill.
 
yours sincerely,
none of my business. 



October 2014, copyright Sarah Hirsch