Saturday At The Canal
By Gary Soto
I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.
School was a sharp check mark in the roll book,
An obnoxious tuba playing at noon because our team
Was going to win at night. The teachers were
Too close to dying to understand. The hallways
Stank of poor grades and unwashed hair. Thus,
A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday,
Neither of us talking much, just warming ourselves
By hurling large rocks at the dusty ground
And feeling awful because San Francisco was a postcard
On a bedroom wall. We wanted to go there,
Hitchhike under the last migrating birds
And be with people who knew more than three chords
On a guitar. We didn't drink or smoke,
But our hair was shoulder length, wild when
The wind picked up and the shadows of
This loneliness gripped loose dirt. By bus or car,
By the sway of train over a long bridge,
We wanted to get out. The years froze
As we sat on the bank. Our eyes followed the water,
White-tipped but dark underneath, racing out of town.
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My Wednesday was a pretty quiet day, which I needed after being out for several days in a row -- the laundry isn't even folded. But I did a bunch of other cleaning up, then I chatted at lunchtime with a couple of my high school friends (one was at work, another was biking with her father and only had a few minutes, so the third and I caught up). It was, once again, a gorgeous day to walk!
Around the evening baseball games, neither of which went the way I wanted, we watched this week's Andor (really good), last week's Kung Fu (pretty good, and so glad Yvonne Chapman is still on the show) and LEGO Masters (now I've finally seen the end of the Jurassic World episode they previewed months ago when the movie came out). Here's how pretty Riley's Lock was this weekend?
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