The Penultimate Chocolate Covered Peanut
You know, I can’t really enjoy it
knowing that soon I’ll have none.
You know, I can’t really enjoy it
knowing that soon I’ll have none.
The sky ahead is clouded,
My path covered in fog,
Still when I take each step,
I find the ground firm.
You have made the windy road straight
And the gravely lane smooth.
I need not see what lies before me
To know I am guided by He who sees All.
You have set the path Yourself,
A path perfect for me alone,
I may walk it through mountains or valleys,
But while upon it, You will not fail.
So, as the fog thickens again,
And my knowledge of the future fades,
I take each step with confidence,
For even if You lead me to the edge,
I will fall into Your arms.
It was three years four months
After Melissa Jørgenrud Helton
Thumbs sticking out
like wrung out dreams
moored for good
measure
decades
on this deck
recklessly denying
nemo’s memo
one foot out
four toes in
you peek through
your reflection
dispersing
till the stream
tickles your sole
and drafts the drifter
Holy Spirit in my heart,
in my mind,
and in my cart-
as it’s the only thing I want.
Can I buy more of it?
How do I cloak myself in it?
Can I fill my plate with it and
then stuff it down?
Let it become part of me
and pilot my bones,
help me make the right choices
that will take me home.
Be my standard,
be my land lord
as I want to give all I have to you.
Be the tenant
in all my vacancies,
be the voice
that I hear within me,
I will listen
and I will seek
until you are me.
Today, I am a Phillip’s- head queen.
Grown enough to recall an old man’s
aftershave on this damnit-to-Hell, where
did I put my flashlight kind of day.
In the attic, covered in sweat and hostility,
there’s dirt nudging between
my fingers…
The tent peak closeness of this tender box
white house is still a luxury for me
to behold.
Along the knuckleboard rafters, I crawl,
breathing hard, unexpected thoughts
about blackberry juicing.
I notice the gallon bucket,
expensive trash bags, and imagine
digging my arms, elbow-deep into quarts of fruit,
dumped in haste, meant for squeezing…
how I would spread the fuchsia-drip transfusion
while I listened to the sucking squish of fruity meat
fall in tempo with squirrel foot ping-pings on
the metal roof this last June Monday
of the year.
I don’t believe in mirrors or
antique bedframes, anymore, but I’d
swing across a river filled with chip-cupped smut,
if it meant I’d never need to wash my shoes again.
Down, down, down I step from
the pull-down attic ladder into the kitchen and
I smile at my inherited table with its old-school veneer,
still missing a leaf…
but man, if it isn’t covered with good taste
laziness and laughs.
There, a mess was left behind the coffeepot. Look!
The fancy dog has brought me
a potato peel from last night’s supper, and
all I can wonder is whether there is time
to plant a rose bush this summer.
Newton had it right centuries ago
with his three physical laws
of motion
of force
of mass,
three stool legs on which to stand
quantum mechanics, relativity and string.
Our human bodies are like bicycles,
upright by balancing
gravity
angularity
velocity.
Our toes press in ten directions all at once,
forces which move us back and forth,
rocking ever so slightly as our muscles flex and un-flex
beneath the fascia and dermis.
Always in motion, chest rising,
heart beating, eyes blinking, ears burning.
We do not stand on two,
but on ten
plus two
plus a thousand others.
But three we lean on, wrap
our arms around backs, link elbows,
crisscross knees and fingers in our conjoining.
That we procreate more than the two of us,
more than existing in a two dimensional land
unable to hold water in the cup of our hand.
We are three so that we can pinpoint
location and trajectory
of we.
For years,
I was afraid of driving.
My grandmother was killed
crossing a street
the same year
I was to learn
to drive.
The lesson seemed clear.
Distance yourself
from the machinery.
Fear the power
of motion.
A 74-year-old woman
with four surviving children,
seven grandchildren,
took her last step.
Then I learned
what driving actually is.
A body
making thousands
of small decisions.
Pressure applied
to a pedal.
A hand adjusting
for a curve.
Attention translated
into motion.
I expected fear.
Instead,
I found agency.
The strange pleasure
of participating
in my own arrival.
The road unfolding
in direct proportion
to my willingness
to move through it.
I still think of her.
Seventy-four.
Still volunteering.
Still making plans.
A life
still moving
through the world.
I eventually learned
I love
the feeling
that the world
responds
to my willingness
to move through it.
