<\/p>\n
Floating<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019m lighter than air<\/p>\n
as I glance around the<\/p>\n
room where I write.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I see a dreamlike life<\/p>\n
in snapshots of me, who<\/p>\n
I was and who I will be.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The row house where<\/p>\n
I was just a kid,<\/p>\n
a monument of cement<\/p>\n
and brick is so much<\/p>\n
more as a flood of memories<\/p>\n
washes over me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Colleen and I in the early days<\/p>\n
next to a photo twenty-five years later<\/p>\n
while now we\u2019re pushing fifty and<\/p>\n
finding out we can take nothing for granted.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Anniversary photo of my parents<\/p>\n
who\u2019s substance is inside me more than I used to think.<\/p>\n
They are next to an unknown enigmatic couple from<\/p>\n
the old country found in a family album. Their stern faces<\/p>\n
reflect a troubled time before my grandparents<\/p>\n
escaped to this new world.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Three pictures of Todd Rundgren whom we called toad<\/p>\n
in junior high and became a rock star surrounds my<\/p>\n
Bar Mitzvah picture with me in the center of a<\/p>\n
family with suits, flowers in lapels and fancy dresses<\/p>\n
that looks like it deserves to be in a period movie.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Vacation picture of me on the beach with a son on my<\/p>\n
shoulders and one on my lap, palm tree in the distance<\/p>\n
strangely foretells where both of them now live.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Below my computer screen is a postcard of the Rocky statue in front of the<\/p>\n
Philly skyline from where I grew up. Also photo of a spiritual gathering in India<\/p>\n
and postcard of the East Berlin soldier jumping over barbed wire in the early days<\/p>\n
of the wall that is famous in Berlin.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My high school graduation photo is above the tipi I pitched with no idea what<\/p>\n
to do next in my life. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by slowing<\/p>\n
down my life and asking the powers that be to please guide me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What I learned is that sometimes if I\u2019m really lucky, the stars are aligned and perhaps<\/p>\n
fate ties in somewhere\u2026I can jump and the net will appear.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Floating I\u2019m lighter than air as I glance around the room where I write. I see a dreamlike life in snapshots of me, who I was and who I will be. The row house where I was just a kid,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109059"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111320,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109059\/revisions\/111320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}