This life startles you

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L o v e   O n e

Allegheny Cemetery

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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The life you could be living aches in its compression,
tires of being a spark, an asteroid,
a falling raindrop bouncing when it hits.
It’s wound tight between muscle and sinew,
lodged in the happy gaps of a synapse.
It’s fluid like flowers. It sounds like geese
out of sight. It’s marvelous as falling asleep
when exhausted, and it foreshadows your dreams
like a stray piece of sunlight or an unnoticed icicle.

Pull apart the paper vignettes and subtle
understandings. Find a favorite shoe lost
decades ago, a line to an old song,
and behind that, the melody that once
made you lift your arms and twirl
in your childhood bedroom after dark.

This life startles you with its foreign tongue
of traumas and kisses, its vulnerable eyes
staring into yours for mercy as it lies down beside you,
tries to say -- although it doesn’t know your language --
that it’s okay how it turned out, that it’s still here,
and despite its wish to be lived,
it’s not going anywhere.

= Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg =

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Happy Monday :: Happy May

Comments

[Audrey]

This is a great poem.

[Jennifer]

@Audrey ... Yes indeed. Beautiful way of looking at life. xoxo