TIM NOLAN
THINGS I DIDN’T KNOW I LOVED
after Nazim Hikmet
It’s November 2020. I’m sitting
At a high-top table amidst
A pandemic in a hotel coffee bar.
On the West Bank of the Mississippi.
Minneapolis. I just read the local
Newspaper. The Vikings beat
The Packers. I don’t care one bit.
What I didn’t know I loved—
The Mississippi River. How it’s always
Been in my life. Sometimes rushing by
As cold water from snow melt up North.
Sometimes lolling—in slow procession
Pulling me to the South and gentler lands.
I didn’t know I loved the trees that bank
The river—the elms and oaks—
The birches and scrub pines. Especially
I didn’t know I loved the saplings
Clinging so earnestly to the rock shelf
Above the river. I didn’t know I loved
The rock shelf. Set this way since
The Ice Age. I didn’t know I loved
The Ice Age. Or any age for that matter.
Especially The Age of Now. Which
I didn’t know I loved. This very now.
KENNEDY, 1963
That was when it all began—
The dread—The—I Suppose This
Won’t Work Out. The obvious
Fix was in for anything that
Might remotely inspire us. So
We became cynical. I should say
I became cynical—at nine-years-old.
It was that Sunday morning when Oswald
Was shot in the gut on the TV screen.
How many times did he flinch that day?
As the old fashioned hat of Jack Ruby
And his snub nose pistol moved in?
I remember how his face was only pain.
So much pain in his face—it became ours.
In those few days we came to believe
Oswald did it. Probably alone. Probably
Just because. We always make people
Crazy. We are very good at that.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tim Nolan was born in Minneapolis, graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in English, and from Columbia University in New York City with an M.F.A. in writing. Tim is an attorney in private practice in Minneapolis. His poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and on The Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. Three of his four collections—The Sound of It, And Then, and The Field have been published by New Rivers Press, and the fourth, Lines, is from Nodin Press. Tim is the host of the series Readings by Writers at the University Club in St. Paul.