Drift

Drift

We expect too much of ourselves.
We ask to be over it,
done with them
to move on.
Life is not only an escalator,
there are sometimes cracked sidewalks.
I bow to base camps and landings,
little ledges where we catch our breath,
they may last a moment,
a day, a season, a decade.

Ninety percent of our serotonin
is made in our bellies,
ninety percent of our communication is non-verbal.
I make my body appear open, not fooling some.
I make my body appear closed, not fooling others.
Gut feeling... going with our guts...
“Herd of horses!” I’d call as my family
mimicked my trot down hiking trails.

I am eating a salad as I write this.
Omg the discipline to reduce
raw cabbage and carrots to a sludge
so that my stomach may extrude nutrients.
A nap feels in order.
Omg, no wonder when stressed I want
to inhale a milkshake,
crave hot potatoes fried in oil and salt.

This poem doesn’t want to be called Buoy
which is what I have been talking about,
chill, nil, stillness, a moment without will.
It is asking for something more.

I always hated when the lifeguard
at the swimming pool lifted his bullhorn
and yelled  “Don’t hang on the rope.”
He had no idea the courage it took
to release the cement siding of the pool,
that I only wanted to catch my breath
while crossing what seemed like the Atlantic.

These summers, I choose lake over chlorine,
I swim through turtle green water.
There are strobe lights of lake grass,
there are flashes of fish.
There is a plastic line demarcating the swimming area,
it reminds me of necklaces strung in kindergarten.
I like to hold the strand with my big toe
while the lake inhales and exhales.
I like to close my eyes to sunsky and let go.