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This made me laugh.

“Come along, don’t hang around, take your time. Don’t start writing love poems, they’re the hardest; wait ’til you’re at least 80. Write about something else: the sea, the wind, a radiator, a tram running late. No one thing’s more poetic than another. Poetry isn’t without, it’s within. Don’t ask what’s poetic or true. Look in the mirror, poetry’s you. Dress your poems up, choose your words carefully. Be selective. Sometimes you need eight months to find a word. Beauty started when people began to choose since Adam and Eve. You know how long Eve took to pick the right fig leaf? “How about this one?” She stripped bare all the fig trees in Paradise. Fall in love. If you don’t, it’s all dead! Fall in love and everything will come to life. Squander your joy, dissipate your cheerfulness, be sad and silent with enthusiasm, hurl your happiness into people’s faces. And how? Let me look at my notes, I’ve forgotten. That’s what you should do. I can’t read ’em. To convey happiness you must be happy. To convey pain you must be happy. Be happy, you must suffer! Don’t be scared of suffering. The whole world suffers! If you don’t have the means, don’t worry. Only one thing is necessary to write poetry: everything. Don’t try to be modern. It’s the most old-fashioned thing there is. If a line doesn’t come to you in this position, chuck yourself on the ground. It’s lying down that you’ll see the sky. Why didn’t I do that before? What are you looking at? Poets don’t look, they see. Make words obey you. If the word “wall” doesn’t take any notice, don’t use it again for eight years! That’ll teach it! What’s that? No idea? That’s true beauty, like those lines there that I want left there forever. Erase it all. We’ve got to start. The lesson’s over.”

SINKING SLOWLY INTO THE SEAT I FELT my back curve into a wave of spinal affliction. Fourteen hours ago I’d been across the country in ecstasy, riding the subway and wondering, subconsciously, why I had to leave away to other things.

Now there were these seats, and few frazzled travelers strewn among them in a similar pain. Whether they were coming or going I don’t know, if their passage was at the onset or winding down; they—we—were stuck all the same, with the janitors and the vending machine meals. Life somewhat faded, I went to brush my teeth in the public restroom.

This felt like punishment for leaving, and I recounted the fourteen hours ago that I walked, and we were walking, we were walking! Together we were on the train into the city, cereal-eating and kneading the sleep from our very eyes. We stood together and waited for the subway and when it passed, I saw our reflection in the window, pane after pane, there we were—together!

It made me so…

But the distraction of departure was painful, eyes hit the floor, my messy face was sad and tired. Boston was vertical in the distance for just a short while.

Lonesome.

I said goodbye, I walked away, I didn’t turn around, and wondered, subconsciously, when we’d once again happen upon this together that I loved.

Well, that was certainly a sufficiently amazing way to end the summer…

The meaning of summer has been revealed,

I AM packing, packing, packing. Tomorrow’s the day I seal the summer, drive off and dawn on a new page of this old life.