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True
by Andrea Farber-DeZubiria I want to tell you something that’s true I want to tell you that it might not be safe to take even one more step. That the sidewalk could explode under your feet, that a bullet called Random and a person you love, might be traveling towards each other, even now I want to tell you that there are so many ways for things to go wrong-- a driver about to wipe up spilled milk, the word "cancer" forming in a doctor's mind, a husband ready to confess when you answer that phone. This morning, I want to tell you to just stay still. I know… I know… Even not moving is a stone laid down to make a dim path So I'll tell you something else. that the first berry might be sweet on your tongue, that the lawn can feel cool to your hot feet in summer, that the next song you hear might make you sing, that we are all bits of ancient stars, gathered to light each other's way... This is also true. Sunflowers—Late Summer In June they’d lift eager faces to her all day. But now when their mother rises each morning with her cheerful offers of attention they mostly stare at the ground pick at their food mumble and slouch. By mid-day her smile’s a hot glare at their backs meant to correct lousy posture and their tendency to drop wrinkled clothes everywhere. She knows that soon their whole world will turn away from her-- a little more each day. They’ll keep changing from the pretty imitations of her they once were until one day they’ll just be gone. And she’ll still be hanging around-- a little dull keeping their room ready and their dinner warm til next spring when they’ll show up in new yellow skirts heads high, grinning and waving. And she’ll brighten She’ll glow. For them she will burn She’ll keep dragging herself out of bed and one morning they’ll suddenly be back. Heads high grinning and waving in their new outfits more beautiful than ever. It’s a familiar cycle by now and this time of year she’s not sure its still worth all the energy she puts out. She’s starting to fantasize shutting off the lights sneaking off where no one will find her leaving them in the cold. Or blowing up everything in a dramatic gesture and herself with it. But it’s not going to happen anytime soon. When summer comes around she’ll act like they never left. She’ll get up smiling kiss and admire each one and mean it. She’ll laugh at their antics and make sure they get all their vitamins. It's been like this since the beginning And hopefully she's not getting too burnt out. Everyone loves her kids. Elegia There’s a poem waiting in the tiny cakes from my Easy Bake Oven and another in the colored pegs of the Light Bright and my Spiro graph designs There’s a poem waiting in my brothers’ Lincoln Log cabins their games of hotbox in the yard, air guitar contests over the garage There’s a poem in the school merry go round how we’d spin each other sick and collapse on the ground to watch the world swirl by There’s a poem waiting in the hardbound dictionary where I looked up their dirty words so I wouldn't be called stupid how they warned me of herds of spiders in my bed and the probability of dying young There’s a poem in the letters they wrote me when they left for college how we spun around until we all landed on this opposite coast where Redwoods grow how for awhile we would meet in restaurants eating Pho or Kung Pao and playing Remember When And now there’s this poem that waits forever in the hillside cemetery where they lie head to foot how I watch brown kids play chase around pink bakery boxes on grandparents’ graves |
