It was just an ordinary day
in an ordinary town.
I wasn’t on a journey or a quest,
but, in retrospect, I see
the events of that day
became an orienting memory.
“Let’s just look at this, Joanie,”
my grandfather said,
and sitting there on the stoop,
his arm around me,
we looked and I saw clearly
the discarded cigarette
I had pretended to smoke,
the dirty street where I found it,
my mother’s look of horror,
and my grandfather and I
sitting side by side…looking.
His unplanned gift to me
became a touchstone
to which I return again and again,
especially in times of
confusion or high emotion:
First the love, then the looking.
JDG