The Sunday Poem

Going on a vacation from myself and old age

Be Like Water

I’m going on vacation/away from me/Vacate & shake the dust off my feet/Sneak out the back door/there must be fifty ways//To push off from/

this ragged shore

I’m supposed to rage against the dying of the light/ a fine & futile fight

Be like water/my friend tells me/she claims it’s easy

Maybe I will become vapour/invisible but everywhere/That makes me queasy

I’m supposed to not go gentle into that night/so I look a fright

Water is a quick change artist/flowing one minute

Hard the next/and then dissolving into air/It has its good and bad days/

old age is a battle that we lose along with our hair

On good days/I am a lake/calm and deep

/my thoughts like speckled trout/motionless in the filtered light/as if asleep

On bad days/I flip into a hail of icy words

That hit /their mark/and everyone takes cover/Cautiously emerging/only when it’s over

On sad days I am rain/a veritable downpour of tears/Scrubbing away the sins of the past/there is no lack/This salty water washes my back

I can hack my age when I dance/prance and ignore this pain in my ass

The best day is when I am a white mist/rising/Like a curtain on a new play/ on words/wise and witty

Or just a silly ditty/to sing in the shower/They say water is life/Let me be the still lake/hard hail/soft rain

And the deep dancing whitewater river/let me be me again