Dearest bleaders,

A poem, for your contemplation.  It is by I.  First published in Columbia Magazine, I’m gonna say 2006.  By the way, isn’t spring sproinging champically?
love,
Jennifer

Steady, Steady

I believe you can build a
boat.

I believe you can get to
water.

I do not believe you can get
the boat on water.

 

How do other people bear

what you are still afraid
of?  The answer

is that when big things
happen

you do go through the looking
glass,

but it is still you who goes
through,

the inner text is all still
right to left,

so you just keep reading.

 

Because there is no boat and
there is no water.

I stare at my tiny baby’s
face

but he so wriggles he can’t
quite be seen. 

He grows steadier, more the
blur

is gone; joins us in the myth
of the stable.

 

Of the quakiness of infancy
and old age

we shimmer and shimmy into
being

and out again.  In the mean

time, we’re horses in the
stable of the myth.

 

A quick check of the ocean,
or any fire,

is a reminder of how things
seem;

I can’t seem to see them.

 

You’re on the beach and you
find out the Secretary

of Defense thinks calico cats
are agents of the devil.

Your friend asks if they get
ten percent.

She was funny, your friend.

The water in this metaphor

is unreal, because of the way
time passes

so you can’t quite get the
boat on water,

but you can build the boat,

 

and a boat is good for a lot
of things

not just on water.

 

Will we, without the boat on
water,

always feel that we are
missing

something basic to the
picture?

 

No.  That is what I’m trying to say.

It is important to let sense
quiver;

even in this stable of the
myth of stable,

even living aboard a boat
mired

in mud in view of the sea.

 

Who wants yet another world?

It’s enough already.