Category Archives: question

Nov3

q and a.

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back in my advertising days

i often had to find answers to odd questions of all kinds

as there was no google then

 when i exhausted all possible avenues

(asking 2 or 3 random people in my office)

i knew there was a place i could go to find someone

who would unfailingly find an answer to my questions

i dialed up the local phone number

of the woman sitting at a desk in the detroit public library

who held the very interesting and important position of

 ‘chief and brilliant question answerer/researcher’

(or some such title as i imagined it to be)

she answered my call

when i asked in all seriousness:

“did gumby (of gumby and pokey fame), have a nose?”

she did not waver or judge and said she would research it and get back to me asap

true to her word she returned my call within the hour with this report:

she could confirm

that gumby did indeed, have a nose

brilliant

client crisis averted

just another moment in her day and i wish this position still existed.

—

“i used to think i knew all the answers.

then i thought knew maybe a few of the answers.

now I’m not even sure I understand the questions.

nobody knows anything.”

― pete nelson, american author

Dec23

an answer.

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THE NIGHT TRAVELER

Passing by, he could be anybody:

A thief, a tradesman, a doctor

On his way to a worried house.

But when he stops at your gate,

Under the room where you lie half-asleep,

You know it is not just anyone—

It is the Night Traveler.

You lean your arms on the sill

And stare down. But all you can see

Are bits of wilderness attached to him—

Twigs, loam and leaves,

Vines and blossoms. Among these

You feel his eyes, and his hands

Lifting something in the air.

He has a gift for you, but it has no name.

It is windy and woolly.

He holds it in the moonlight, and it sings

Like a newborn beast,

Like a child at Christmas,

Like your own heart as it tumbles

In love’s green bed.

You take it, and he is gone.

All night—and all your life, if you are willing—

It will nuzzle your face, cold-nosed,

Like a small white wolf;

It will curl in your palm

Like a hard blue stone;

It will liquefy into a cold pool

Which, when you dive into it,

Will hold you like a mossy jaw.

A bath of light. An answer.

 

 

—

credits: poem from Twelve Moons, 1979 by Mary Oliver, painting – google images