2.15.2009

being lazy

Random Thing #14
Yawn. Too lazy and tired to write something new, so I'm posting a poem I wrote for my mom last spring.

Outlasting Consumption

I can’t shake the persistent refrain
Of this one fleeting thought

Which froze my fingers
mid-motion,
Turning over a price tag

On a discount Banana Republic dress.


Looking at you over a stack of neatly folded sweaters

Your face lined with graceful

Surrender and knowledge,

And my heart aching for us to always have one another

Like this —


And one piercing thought, like a clove
Into the skin of an orange,
That these dishcloths we are buying,
these shoes from Brazil,
Even if they end their journey in a landfill

They will survive us.


Long after you can walk, and I can walk

When our spirits no longer inhabit these

So-similar bodies

The wax fruit I bought
will still exist
As we know it today.

1 comment:

Susan Marie said...

I'm grateful for your laziness otherwise I wouldn't have been able to re-read your beautiful poem. Things of the heart stay etched forever . . . my love for you is everlasting . . .