Tuesday, July 12, 2011

choices

[once & a while, a poem]

Choices

I prefer rain.
I prefer Mike.
I prefer children from walking age until puberty.
I prefer Earl Grey tea with honey.
I prefer Peet’s coffee.
I prefer yellow, orange, & purple.
I prefer raspberries.
I prefer to get the details right ahead of time.
I prefer a house that faces east & south (east & north
in the southern hemisphere).
I prefer a botanical garden to a landscaped garden.
I prefer color to black & white.
I prefer suffering from my remarkable dreams
to the alternative of not dreaming.
I prefer Keegan for his humor, Zoe for her thoughtfulness, Moshe
for his determination, Phaedra for her zaniness, Daniel
for his affection, Tova for her attitude.
I prefer solitude, quiet, nature.
I prefer the out of doors.
I prefer glass houses & metal roofs.
I prefer knowing the shape of the inside
from the shape of the outside.
I prefer large birds whose flying seems improbable.
I prefer women friends.
I prefer reading to movies.
I prefer dirty over clean.
I prefer barefoot, naked, uncivilized, & I don’t like buttons.
I prefer raw food.
I prefer baby animals, whole milk, shrimp with their heads on.
I prefer single malt scotch.
I prefer J, K, Q, X, & Z.
I prefer wet grass, unopened buds, unfurled fronds, ripe fruit.
I prefer walking on land to boating on water or flying in air,
unless I’m riding in a helicopter or flying my body in a dream.
I prefer riding to driving.
I prefer riding bareback to holding a pommel.
I prefer squash to tennis, baseball to football, hats to gloves.
I prefer anything over celebrity culture, mass media, processed food,
& conspicuous consumption.
I prefer hard rain & lightning & thunder.
I prefer swimming.
I prefer the life of the mind to the life of the body.
I prefer William Carlos Williams & Ezra Pound to T. S. Eliot.
I prefer Scrabble.
I prefer clearing the forest with lopping shears & chainsaw
to liberate ferns & ohi’as.
I prefer apple bananas & white pineapple.
I prefer Torrontés.

Carol Peters [photo by Mike Smith on his birthday]