Ron Padgett
Sitting Down Somewhere Else
Sitting Down Somewhere Else
I look out the window and the first thing I see
is a large, immobile god (a tree).
The house is surrounded by such gods
whose heads, like mine, are in the clouds
that have come far down to drift and be vague
the way they were that first night in The Hague
when I sat alone in a Chinese restaurant
whose waiter didn’t ask What would you like
and I heard the owners a few tables away
repeat the words the language records had them say:
Hello! How are you? I am fine.
Is this a good place for me to dine?
The emptiness of the room was worse
than the emptiness of the universe
and I had nowhere else to go but here,
which is where I think I am, or was, or there.