A MORE EXCITING LIFE
Let's take a vote. How many people think I need to speed up time to two weeks from now so I can start working already? How many people want to be taken off this mailing list? How many of you wish I'd take up knitting again?
A MORE EXCITING LIFE
Once upon a time there was a man
who was very tired of selling plants
from the flower shop he inherited
and one night as he fed the koi fish
in the display pond he wished for
a more exciting life. The next day,
he woke up falling out of bed,
tumbling upward until his feet
were firmly planted in a storm cloud
about two hundred feet above the shop
and his tiny apartment window.
He saw customers begin to line up
at the door shortly after nine o’clock.
He thought they might look up and see
him standing upside down in the sky
and maybe fetch a fire engine
but they just looked at their watches
and each other, then started shrugging
and walking back to their cars and bicycles.
The man in the sky called and called
to them but no one heard. He waved
his arms and swung from the cloud
like a strange, man-shaped chandelier.
He missed his apartment and worried
about the pansies, which would need
to be covered later on when it rained.
He could feel the storm cloud leaking
through his socks into his flannel pants.
He figured he could cry because no one
was in the sky to see him so he wept.
His face was snotty like a little boy’s
and he wailed and took back his wish
a hundred times. He cried until
he was exhausted and had nothing
to do but hang there and watch the koi fish,
which were very small orange dots
from his perspective and all they did
was swim in lazy figure eights, wondering
where their breakfast had got to.
...
A MORE EXCITING LIFE
Once upon a time there was a man
who was very tired of selling plants
from the flower shop he inherited
and one night as he fed the koi fish
in the display pond he wished for
a more exciting life. The next day,
he woke up falling out of bed,
tumbling upward until his feet
were firmly planted in a storm cloud
about two hundred feet above the shop
and his tiny apartment window.
He saw customers begin to line up
at the door shortly after nine o’clock.
He thought they might look up and see
him standing upside down in the sky
and maybe fetch a fire engine
but they just looked at their watches
and each other, then started shrugging
and walking back to their cars and bicycles.
The man in the sky called and called
to them but no one heard. He waved
his arms and swung from the cloud
like a strange, man-shaped chandelier.
He missed his apartment and worried
about the pansies, which would need
to be covered later on when it rained.
He could feel the storm cloud leaking
through his socks into his flannel pants.
He figured he could cry because no one
was in the sky to see him so he wept.
His face was snotty like a little boy’s
and he wailed and took back his wish
a hundred times. He cried until
he was exhausted and had nothing
to do but hang there and watch the koi fish,
which were very small orange dots
from his perspective and all they did
was swim in lazy figure eights, wondering
where their breakfast had got to.
...
Comments
Your hiking photographs were enticing -- what a great place!! I always love to read your poems! When will you write the "bad" one again?
Thinking of you and smiling, too! K.