Literary Las Vegas: Joseph Baldi Acosta
April 23, 2014 - 8:31 pm
Part-time Southern Nevada resident Joseph Baldi Acosta melds his experiences living in Brazil, Jordan and Ecuador with his love for America in “My Life in Metaphor” an book of reflective poetry on “life, death, and everything in between.”
Excerpt from ‘My Life in Metaphor’
Letter To the Sun
(after Frank O’Hara)
Dear Sun:
You relentlessly rise, set, rise
set, turn pages — vivid personal photos
spring, summer, autumn, winter
repeated on auto-pilot
slow to fast to faster,
pictures caught in a strobe light
cinema verite mine,
projected on a screen.
I try desperately to slow you,
push you back, walk another
700 miles, 800 miles, lift
God knows how many tons of iron,
torture myself on the physioball —
short cuts only for Dr. Faustus
and Dorian Gray.
You see, Sun, I still have lots of plans. I’m gonna try like hell to make it
to 40, 45, if I’m ridiculously lucky, 50 years with my lovely wife, take her
places near and far we’ve never been —Niagara, Montreal, a boat ride
on the Danube, the temples of Cambodia, the Hermitage and Bolshoi
ballet, birding in the jungles, savannas and deserts, until we reach 3,000,
family reunions in exotic settings, maybe Costa Rica or Panama: we can
use our Spanish there, see the grandbabies reach 18, 21, if I win the
lottery, 25, keep moving the legs and swinging the racquet supersenior,
but what comes after supersenior?
It was time for my physical again last month,
but was it my turn? Hardening of the arteries —
is the bp high, the cholesterol, triglycerides,
PSA under 4.0, leucocytes, eosinophils OK? Please
doctor don’t tell me it’s the Big C!
I took a deep breath, left the office,
got a lease on an life for another year. I’ll keep
going full bore, taking photos of the calendar spring, summer,
fall, winter, until we both stop, Sun, I’ll keep running the projector to the moment the film freezes, the celluloid
burns melts disappears.
Yours Sincerely,