February 22, 2011

reminders

Though it may seem like a fractured peninsula sometimes, or worse, a buoy
adrift on an unceasing ocean, your life is tethered to a million crumbs
of earth. Watch how, helpless and searching, you know to cling to the stewy
undergrowth, clutch at bright blades of grass, cock an ear to the drums
of distant thunder with your hands curled on the window. Something in you knows
what rootedness is and finds it even when staying put seems impossible.
Look how you consider the moon, even, from the square pillows
of the couch in your quiet flat in your busy, anonymous city. You can eye it full
in the face, wishing for some speedy emancipation from your flailing and slipping.
But no. You stay where you are, with the whole of you gripping.