Now by Dan-Vy Nguyen

Now by Dan-Vy Nguyen

I used to mock the older folks

That wake up early in the morning,

Go to bed early in the evening,

And take naps in the middle of the day.

Now I go to bed in the afternoon,

Wake up in the middle of the night,

And take frequent naps,

All because I work graveyard.

I used to mock the people

That skip class,

That lie in bed all day,

And get nothing done.

Now it’s easy for me

To lie in bed all day,

Getting lost in TV shows,

And getting nothing done.

I used to mock the people

That go the library

To study every single day

How do they study so much?

Now all I do is study,

Having no time for anything else,

Finding the library a place,

Without any distractions.

I used to mock the people

That are excited to go to mass every week

That go to mass during the week

That go to mass every chance they get.

Now I have become one of those people,

If my crazy schedule allows it,

I would be at mass every single day,

I want to be at mass every single day.

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Early Sunday Morning by Edward Hirsch

I used to mock my father and his chums

for getting up early on Sunday morning

and drinking coffee at a local spot

but now I’m one of those chumps.

No one cares about my old humiliations

but they go on dragging through my sleep

like a string of empty tin cans rattling

behind an abandoned car.

It’s like this: just when you think

you have forgotten that red-haired girl

who left you stranded in a parking lot

forty years ago, you wake up

early enough to see her disappearing

around the corner of your dream

on someone else’s motorcycle

roaring onto the highway at sunrise.

And so now I’m sitting in a dimly lit

café full of early morning risers

where the windows are covered with soot

and the coffee is warm and bitter.