is there a poem hiding here?
 
 
            The world is not yet done.
 
            David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art & Fear,
            Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
 
 
I brought a memory for you.   I brought it here for show and tell.
            Harmless.

Middle December it was.   About four foot tall, four blocks from home
towards Grandmother’s house.   Small farming town.   Grandmother
Janet and Great Uncle Louis.   Now you know two names.   Morning,
it wasn’t cold.   A van stops in front, man steps out with a little red
wagon in tow.   He knocks at the door.   The little red wagon goes
inside into Grandmother’s hand.   Me a mere hundred feet away.

Oh Grandmother, is that for me?   The question was very ripe.
No, she says, for another young boy down the block.   No other
question followed.   Dare I ask again?   No, I dare not seal my fate.

You already surely know.   Just a ruse not to spoil the surprise.
To my falling wish, it worked.   For another week or two, it did.

Is it important to remember this?   I do.   Memory too, says yes.
 
 
             so what’s the closest place where judgements abound?
            myself, of course.   ripe and available.
 
            like memories?   is attending wrong to do?   thus even
            fair weather called foul.   why christen the vessel wrong?
            is there a line betwixt memory and this moment now?

                        grace says,      receive like water does gravity.
 
 
Maybe the phrase also is, tell the right truth.   Allow the story to be
what it wants to be.   How to be fooled when you’re moving in the
direction you’re supposed to be.   Understanding is a sort of booby
prize.   What you breathe inside is better truth.
 
 
Janet had an unspoken rule.   When I left her house she’d walk me
down the driveway to the street.   Then wave me off down to the
very far end of the block.   Another wave till I was gone from sight.
            Some gestures last a lifetime.

And now you know two names you didn’t before.
 
 
 
            And my wish for you.

That little red wagon, that’s for you.

See me waving.