Literary Las Vegas: Joseph Baldi Acosta

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,