Saratoga Again

(August 2023. Asher and I are driving Alice the Red Bus across the country on I-80 all the way from NY to SF. As we left New York, I talked excitedly about how we would visit the Saratoga Hobo Hot Springs in Wyoming, just a half hour off I-80, never worth missing. I had been at Saratoga in October 2022 (when I wrote “Hot Thoughts.”) I called our shot, imagined myself in the hot springs in the future… then, what do you know, a few days later there I am, in the hot springs. Both moments along the timeline were “in the present,” the calling of the shot and the being there. This poem intends to capture that Heraclitean feeling of having called your shot, and making it.)

Saratoga Again

Destiny is mostly a verb,
and only a little bit a noun.

Take aim down your sight the tip of your finger
and call your shot across a continent
thousands of miles your will is the trigger—

trust that your body’s heart can hurt and overcome
beat and beat and beat and beat—
alive within the rhythm of the river of time—
blink, blink, blink
and you’re there—
where you wanted to be—

the perfect old new place for the new old you.