a puzzling phrase, to be sure
"the real world"
used in every setting
i've ever been in

remember high school
the drama, the trauma
emotions infinitely multiplied
for every trivial thing

"the real world" was waiting
we would automatically enter it
the day after graduation

for some it came
with an illegal hangover
for a few, who should have
been with us, not at all

for others it didn't come,
not in the endless summer
before our college days
not in the tedious courses
mandatory classes
that we sometimes heard
through sleeping ears

it came too soon
for those whose draft numbers
were too low, whose fate
was to die in a real world
of jungles across an ocean
tangles of death and destruction

fifty years on, and still
i hear that tired phrase
people comparing where they are
to where they want to be

and i finally understand
that the real world isn't real
it is an ignorant longing
for something better
than where and what we are

as though our current reality
is not to be believed
                        

the blue whale, big
as a ten-wheeler, who could swamp
our ships with one flick of a fluke,
but doesn’t

i marvel that anything her size
exists at all, that
this leviathan with lungs
lives in the sea
swims, dives, eats
where i fear to go

marvel that in her immensity
she is more gentle than
dandelion spores in the wind
feels no need to dominate
to conquer
to destroy

america, america
my country, my home
i beg you

be this whale
						

you posted another photo today
of snow and red-rock hills

it might have been from south of town
i couldn't really say

but i imagined the paths
through the icy white powder

as being yours, and maybe those
of another friend whose face

has grown old like mine
old, and hard, and wintery

you seem so content in a place 
i couldn't wait to leave

happy to be there, pleased
with your choice to linger

it was home, it was mine
but it was never enough

i replay faulty memories
from half a century ago

all of them tinged with
various shades of loss

of love that sputtered and died
in the high desert winds

i contemplate this latest scene
and wonder, as i sometimes do

who i would be with today
if i had stayed