Josie

Josie was a flaming
oxymoron. He wore
the same outfit every single day:
black kung-fu pants, a black
nehru shirt, black Teva sandals,
and a jet-black, plain baseball cap.
And he was the most heart-felt sufi,
miracle-worker, mystic, love-of-all-souls
man I've ever known. Believed
strongly in the consciousness of plants
(as I do to this day).
His biggest plan in life was
to finish his stint at the health-food
store where we both worked,
and then head to Tahiti to live
naked on the beaches, eating only
fruit that had fallen from the trees.
Not long before I fled myself, to Maine,
like Noah to carve out a whole
new world on a homestead
right after my own then-floods of
revelation, Josie, a manager at the
health-food store, confided in me
a beautiful but ugly truth:
he had decided he could no longer
condone the massacre of living things
by the use of exterminators. No more
poison to keep rats out of the dried fruit
in the basement, no more chemicals
to keep roaches away, no more violence
of any kind. "What about the grains?"
I asked. "Oh, some need to go back
to Mother anyway, right?" I nodded.
When he saw me off, driving
into the winter snow drifts in my
borrowed wagon over-stuffed with
books, Josie assured me I shouldn't
be worried about the future.
"Right now we're on the crux of a
new epoch. Those still caught in the
old one, stuck on sin and suffering,
won't be able to join us in the new era,
the age of cooperation and action.
It will all be beautiful again, trust me,
and we will all love each other once
more, wrinkles and paunches, scars and
fears and all." I'm still waiting for
the new epoch to really dawn, but
I'm certain it's not far off.
And I smile at least once a week
when I think of peaceful Josie,
cooperating like hell, naked and
devouring a papaya on a beach
somewhere in Tahiti.

(2006)