south jersey delaware bay birding

Fortescue Red Knots and Migrant Shorebirds album

Glades Wildlife Refuge album

Egg Island album

Millville Maurice River album

google map

not the end of the world

When I hear someone say

“It’s not the end of the world.”

I think of the image of time as a line

And a lifetime as a line segment.

There are so many expressions invoking images

I often get lost from the conversation

Thinking about the literal meaning of the words.

Perhaps I have a touch of autism.

Last week my Korean ESL student got frustrated

Reading a story that said the person acted

Out of frustration.   To him that made no sense.

Why not in frustration?  I understand.

When I was a boy numbers and logic made sense.

I learned new words as mathematical concepts.

Later I was confused upon hearing those same words

Holding some alternate meaning outside math.

My favorite poet as a young man was a linguist

Separating out the phonemes and morphemes

Combining them into words like atoms into molecules

While the roots of his words became roots in the ground.

Sometimes this language is foreign to my ear

And what I hear is just the intonation and rhythm.

Sometimes the letters on the page are strange characters

What the typographers call Greek.

A poem begins “Moon, cantilever of syllables”

And I see an enormous dipthong bridge

Spanning the Milky Way transporting me

Far out into the endless universe.

indian pond teaneck

album

losen slote ramapo river overpeck lake

album