ManicDDaily

The Way Of It

How do we know
what’s meaningful in our lives, what higher purpose
we may serve?

We think it has to do with work, family, something
hard-hoed,

but maybe we were brought here simply
to walk that dog
whose incisored smile and skipping trot
seemed to lift the souls of passers-by
caught in the grey cracks
of New York City.

Maybe it was to elicit that once-satisfied goodnight
from the woman you call regularly
who has to bustle about for her hearing aids
just to register your hello.

Maybe it was your wrist flicking on
the car radio a jammed
afternoon and squeezing among
the blistered fenders a waft
of ‘over the rainbow,‘

or the sight of the leftover moon
a blue morning,

or your slow recognition
that those ochre fronds of weed
were not in fact a doe
in yesterday’s dusk, though just
as beautiful–

Maybe it has all amounted
to a single–one-time–confirmation of
the universality of
a universe

that we must love we must love we must love–

You tell yourself–I tell
myself at least (if I can summon up
the will when I am low)–that any light I’ve lit
is too close at hand
for me to see,
that I must, at last, trust
in the kindness of moths,
the hunger
of moths, the compulsion
of moths,
though their wings be as dry
as leaves in a rusting fall,
though that fall is nearly
run through–
that still they will find
my bit of flame,
and though I feel rather sorry
for those moths (even if a part of me longs
for the momentarily brightened flare),
maybe moths too
serve strange purposes.

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Here’s a rather odd poem for With Real Toads, Play It Again Sam, hosted by Margaret Bednar.  In this case, I am using the actual prompt of Kenia Cris, to write something inspired by the philosophical poetry of Brazilian Poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade.  Margaret posts some beautiful pics from her daughter’s school, but I chose to you my own photograph above.