Finding San Jose

Call it a brute sense of simple animal well-being
Stuck in my memory is one recollection of it
When I was back still going to college, I think
I was riding in my 1959 bug-eyed Austin Healy Sprite
With the radio on but the convertible top down
Driving up Evergreen Canyon road one bright morning
And I didn't have a care in the world

Just then the words of the old song came to me
Simon and Garfunkle singing Feelin' Groovy
And I did, for just that one endless moment

Many years later, I also felt the very same thing
Once in Washington, D.C., when you were still a baby, in a carriage
Pushing you along, walking beside your mother
I felt-reminder of the one time past, and herald of any yet to come
That same brute, simple sense of sheer animal well-being again
As if God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world

There have been other times, too, I've fleetingly felt the same
The body itself somehow retains the knowledge, it seems
Of how to go back there to that bodily well of animal well-being
If I will just get out of the way and let it lead and guide me there

And that, I think, may really be, at long last, the way to San Jose