The Salve of Poetry

I'm warming up to writing my book by writing poetry daily.
I love it when I feel like I'm not in charge, I'm just scribing. Ever have that feeling?

CANISTERS

My metaphors are confused.

One of them flies kites while laying concrete

and the other attends parties wearing hoodwinks and dangling participles.

I ask that they go to a conference on Consistency and instead they

crash a Three Ring Circus and set free the tigers,

and befriend the elephants,

and now it’s down to only one ring...

that no one answers because it’s a wedding ring

and everyone knows THAT’s the end of freedom and yet

they do,

they do “I do.” They answer anyway ... inconsistently.

Life rolls on canisters of flour and tea and coffee

each placed in descending order on kitchen counters.

Turned on our sides we spin along in canister compliance

with the expected until one day we encounter

the pothole and the tea spills and the flour wilts

and the coffee does nothing because no one actually

puts coffee in the canister marked Coffee.

But the pothole is a portal to freedom.

What you do with the porthole

defines you

because you must find your way back to yourself.

That’s where you decide who you are and build a life

based on the satisfaction of letting go of the kite string and trusting

that the breeze knows what it’s doing.

Your indelible expression matches the sky’s apparent magic

and wipes free all ambivalence, so simply believe

the breeze knows what it's doing.

 

Comments

[Barbara Hagerty]

This is brilliant! A joy to read!