If you are beautiful.
—Jack Spicer
Yesterday I did not
encounter any fountains.
Well, this is not true.
My youth is enshrined
within hope for a future.
The scan of the hustle
and bustle around me
until I spot the one that
brings a little tingle up
my spine. The scan of
the hustle and bustle
around me at Union
Square or at Target at
the Metreon at nine-thirty
at night or at Fisherman's
Wharf (ever so happily
playing the tourist in my
own city!) until I spot
The One. I am enshrined
in the twill (or the tulle)
until I spot The One.
I am enshrined in the twill
of the until. ’Twill happen,
one day, this Until. Like
Ponce de Leon’s ‘discovery’ of
Arkansas while searching for
the Fountain of Youth, which
he’d had on authority
was somewhere nestled in
the Ouachitas, where now
sits the city of Hot Springs.*
*Hot Springs, Arkansas. de
Leon being the ‘disoverer’ of
The Natural State, the great
not-so-imaginary homebase of
the imagination of yours truly;
that wondrous would be
Land of Opportunity. And,
as we also learned in that
same Arkansas History
Class, it was then the home
of the Chocktaw, Chick-
asaw, Cherokee and
Creek. And Some-
times, also, the Sioux.**
**This ‘fact,’ I have since
discovered, likely appears
to be less the true, as well.
