Unprepared for Poetry

I didn’t mean to go out to lunch today. Last night we worked on the budget, and eating out was clearly not in it. But it was one o’clock, and I hadn’t eaten and I ran for the bus this morning without grabbing anything to eat later. And, to use an old fashioned word, the "vibes" in the office were less than harmonious. I needed food and air, so into the near freezing wind I marched. And was promptly stopped by Vladimir from Port au Prince, Haiti. Or at least that’s how he introduced himself. But since I couldn’t tell where his eyes were looking (they didn’t wander, on the contrary, they seemed fixed in position, but he wasn’t blind) so I couldn’t quite make eye contact to test his honesty. His accent, while not exactly local, didn’t have any of the cadence of the Caribbean, but I decided that today, openness was more important than cageyness, and chose to accept the situation at face value.


I shook hands with Vladimir, who promised that if I would wait for 45 seconds, he would make a poem from my name that would mean something new each day. Then he handed me a polished amethyst worry stone and a packet of envelopes and wrote my poem with hardly a pause, moving closer to me to block the wind when I shivered. I tried to block the thought that whatever the poem meant today, tomorrow it would be a reminder of having my pocket picked, and watched him write my poem in a barely legible scrawl across a Japanese flash card. He pulled the flash card off its ring and placed it in one of the Japanese envelopes. When I asked if his poems were for the sake of art or for sale, he said he left it to me.

“Some people give 50 cents, some $5. I can’t say what it is worth to you, and maybe weren’t prepared and can’t give anything. It’s just how much you want to help me out.” I dug in my bag and found $3. Vladimir gave me a hug and as I walked away I tried not to wonder if I was going to get lice.  Hey, all that human connection stuff doesn't come to me easily.

Here is his poem:

Gain of a cosmic and intelligent worth, To
Embrace the ambilateral knowledge
Mighty sword and a seat of solitude when in an hour you
Must accept the beauty that unfolds them both into one, from
A surrendering force of a delightful promise to keep, like a mountain of dreams.

This and an amethyst worry stone cost me $3.  After that, I got a tofu Rueben on artisan bread and a fancy hot chocolate. It cost $11 and I put another buck in the tip jar.  Which part of that $15 was best spent?

Post Script: Ambilateral IS a word. I had to look it up. It is an adjective meaning, “relating to both sides.”