I just realized I’m not titling my poems.  That’s ok for now.  Usually the title comes to me but I guess I’ve been focusing too hard on making sure I get a poem!

The Ordinary Instant

Life changes in an instant.
The ordinary instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
the question of self pity.
Joan Didion

What is the sound of a life falling apart?
Does it rustle like wind in leaves?  Feed
on anger – erupt and spew? Or is it
silent as white snow falling in a sterile room
on a just-discovered planet with no name.

My concerns sit across from me in a chair
colored red, blue and grey mist
(the feelings not the chair).  We
are in careful conversation about who
or maybe what is in control, serious
controversy around the crown –
who abdicates, who commands.

If I were a crustacean, I would
discard this husk, grow one less soft,
more secure, scurry across the sand
into underwater grasses
beneath green water and turquoise sky.

Instead,  I sip coffee at a convenience cafe
surrounded by conversations I can hear
but don’t understand, as if
a different language I can’t decode:

“For immediate release (PR and letting go, both)
K, an avid student of MG, spent her life searching
for a key.  She hoped for a translation of wonders,
of wisdom.  Instead she got a cryptic missive:

“I count the count of generations.  I chant into
the memory of myself and those who come
later –  I know who I am.  I do not know what
that means – will anyone listen?”

At the next table 4 people crack jokes, laugh
loudly. Outside the sun moves across the sky
ceaselessly, uncaring,  no more in control
than I am, and in concert we relentlessly carry on.