Centrum Resolution: (A letter to old and new friends)

I: What are your favorite poets?
J: Well, I love baseball.
I: Oh. Well who are your favorite poets?
J: Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you said sports…
Ilya and Jim on a Friday evening

Here is my goodbye:

On my first day back at school I found a baseball, hidden in the deep grass beside my classroom. Inscribed are the initials of a student no longer with us. I have been rolling, tossing, spinning the ball in my hand all morning, and have inscribed two quotes that move me.

Centrum Resolution: I will find or buy one baseball every week, and do the same with each. One week at a time, I will play catch with my sons, let the dirt and oil of our hands rub onto it in our act of giving, our game of catch – Mine, now yours, now mine, now yours—

One week at a time, I will carry an inscribed baseball with me wherever I go. It will be my talisman.

So, the two inscriptions of this first found baseball:

One is a quote from the character Jean Valjean, but the other is from our last night together at Centrum, Ilya’s question to Matt and I,

“Look at the stars—
Don’t they make you feel like you are missing something?”

Consider, Ilya, the field
where we all lay flat on our backs
under moonlight, the copper paper
of the madrona trees

and those promiscuous stars, streaking
as we stood upon the sky.

And here is my goodbye, my second baseball quote in the words of Jean Valjean:

“I must go. I stole something. I did. I stole happiness with you. I don’t mind paying.”

Love, Jim

Sunflowers

Today, on the way to work, I was greeted by an unexpected field of sunflowers, and spoke aloud my poem, Why Jesus Loved Sunflowers:

Their wide pregnant faces, bowed low with seed; prophet heads, awaiting harvest.

My mission in life: be more like John the Baptist, to be a voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for those greater than I, those who will rise up from their deathbeds to redeem their world.