October 15, 2012

poem 380 of a poem a day for 2012




getting away from the animals, being junk metal circus ready

walking twenty miles
with holes in your socks
doesn’t matter when your feet
are already wet and cold
and with each step
you become your own
carried sponge
across the river rule
you become another version
of the stubborn mule
fooled into holding everything
like old leather and
plastic bag liners and
the blisters that go away
with liquor and sleeping
huddled near a barrel fire
with enough trust in aluminum
to get a few moments rest
before the Dawn comes and
the day swallows you back inside
its perpetual movement and glow

walking twenty miles
with holes in your socks
is enough to pick up bottle returns
to sort out why you like to carry
all the weight of every memory
you can’t let go of until you are
well into the next bottle
of whatever can make you forget
for just a little while longer
while you acknowledge
the daily race is to every last end

and what a day 
places possibility 
in your way for 
in order for you
to be a part of
some worn lifetime
where nothing 
but the poet inside you
knows your mud brick tides
are the pathos
you've laid out 
in building a world 
that you can see inside

and because ignorance and bliss
are the perfect partners 
and because they are dancing 
and side stepping
each slide sweep
of hands turning
out the sea
we are winding the clocks
so that you can see
what your cage
with a symphony
will look like
in the dark

the fall always seems
so much quicker
than the ascent
and you wonder
picking up speed
is the price of comfort
worth paying
when turning 
your humanity
from an owner 
of this world
to just paying rent
day by day
with your copper 
smelting silhouettes
mimicking where 
the pennies went

walking twenty miles
with holes in your socks
praying to whatever Heaven
will listen enough
to give you more time
to send yourself hollering prayers
to bend yourself on your way again
to being your dirty legume roots
in the spread tuck harvests
of the apple and pear trees
nearing late October
with the tipped smells of rain
picking up what you try
to leave behind

EJR ©

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