On the one day of the annual Hills Garlic Festival it rained.
Among the crowd, there were those, predictably, who grumbled
And those who enthused at the sight of double rainbows over the lake
And me, who spoke darkly and monotonously of irony
And found a seat in the sun, but out of the rain. Good bear.
Hundreds, perhaps a thousand or two people evidencing
Various predictive strategies for a day at an outdoor festival
With the weather all up in the air wandered around and around me,
Bareheaded or hatted, in jackets or under umbrellas or not,
Although the teens who preferred to show up in shorts or swim wear
Were conspicuously nowhere. About to be nowhere myself
And therefore seeing all of this as about to have never have been,
I nevertheless thought about yesterday, previous festivals,
A year ago, six, eight, as if they had ever been here, as if here
Were where they had been, and tomorrow when the sun will
Or will already have had returned, and the vendors will be gone
And the crowds, and my family and me and our stories,
And if I have ever come back here myself after that
It will not be me, not be here that will be here, not here.
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