dynamic elf

Which kind of happened last week, actually. Feeling better now - back on my bike, out in the sunshine, I'm remembering to tend the quiet and corporeal parts of my life - but still, I'd rather push too many buttons and jam up like a typewriter from time to time than stay idle.

And so, a poem for you all:

Wake-up Call
by Mary Jo Salter


The water is slapping wake up, wake up, against the boat
chugging away from Venice, infinite essence
of what must end because it is beautiful,

Venice that shrinks to a bobbing, pungent postcard
and then to nothing at all as the automatic
doors at the airport obligingly shut behind you.

Re-enter a world where everything is the same,
where you’ve gone slack again, and don’t even know it,
so unaware that you actually shrug to yourself,

I’ll be back, and yes, for some lucky stiffs it’s true,
sometimes it’s you, you’re sure to get more chances
at Venice, and Paris, and that blessed, unmarked place

where you sat on a bench and he kissed you that first time,
so many kisses, you hoped he would never stop,
you can hope, at least, not ever to forget it,

or forget how your babies, latching onto your breast,
would roll up their eyes in an ecstasy that was comic
in its seriousness, though your joy was no less grave,

but you’re not going back to so much, and more and more,
the more you live there’s more not to go back to,
and what you demand in your gratitude and greed

is more life in which to get so attached to something,
someone or someplace, you’re sure you’ll die right then
when you can’t have it back, something you don’t even know

the name of now, but will be yours before receding
as an indispensable ache; what you’re saying
is Lord, surprise me with even more to miss.