Some Days
Some days are like that,
And you cry
at the sweet smell
of wood smoke.
The leaves that spiral
in two lines behind the tires
of the truck in front of you.
The heavy, laden
limbs of apple trees
where you never noticed them before.
The blue painted school bus
parked for eternity
in a field, next to a dump truck sprouting
milkweed, jewel weed, any weed will do.
The chestnut colored bull,
lying placidly, king-like
in all his bulk
with his harem chewing their cud around him.
And you cry at everything
because it is beautiful,
and you are sad.
And it all screams of something
lonely
and losable.
And just when you've forgotten
the blessed breaking of small beautiful things;
And just when you think
this pregnant love
must dwell in darkness forever,
Your heart bursts open
At the half-wave
of the roadman, round and suspendered,
as you wreck the perfect ripples of his grader track.
The girth of the old maples
that line this road,
and you hope the changing of the guards never comes.
But maybe, like an old man,
they want to leave this earth,
seen more than enough -
more than one life can carry.
The swollen flesh
ofa field pumpkin,
past its term.
You weep as you stumble,
carefully, over the pile of flower petals
and fairy-size bundles of pea pods stuffed with winter food storage,
And you swell with gratitude that she still believes,
while simultaneously, your heart breaks
that you've asked her to.
Believe.
In anything.
Still, you wish tonight the fairies
would swoop down on you in sleep and
brush their delicate wings across your forehead,
smooth away your worry lines and offer up
some faith, a little magic.
But as yet,
they have not, and so your tears whisper down your cheek,
as you watch the hillsides, your hills,
turn flaming orange before your wet eyes.
And again the endless weaving
of beauty and sorrow,
as the sad songs of Cat Stevens
tell you all the stories your father never could.
And you wonder
how you will explain the tears
to the small hopeful heart in the back seat.
A smile sends the tears down new rivers
along the creases from your nose,
when the fairgrounds, now ripe with manure spreading,
come into view.
And you remember the belly aches from maple cotton candy
we ate on the Ferris Wheel last week,
before the leaves had started to change.
Tears flow for the sweet old drunk lady
with the grey bun atop her head.
She walks down the quaint village street,
always tippsily pulling bottles from her purse,
always chain-smoking.
Everyone says she's very nice.
You cry at the black flopping ears,
flying up above tall grass, as the dog runs,
gleefully throwing the dried cardboard frog
into the air – the same one the cats seem to kill again each day.
You're glad your body knows some things -
Today's a day for walking
slowly, quietly, noticing.
And you step along the path
of spent blackberry bushes and brown curling ferns,
and you surprise a doe
in equal measure
to her surprising you.
But you both stand still -
face to face -
looking into each other's brown liquid eyes,
two, three...eight seconds
before you gently say Hello,
darling, and she bounds away.
And you wonder how so many things
can hold such fleeting beauty
and such muted suffering
all at once.
And you yearn
for something easy
to walk through your heart,
like the way you love a barn,
and hover over your day, or maybe
Stay,
for just
a little while.
Or even, maybe longer.
