MYSTERY

I wonder

what is going on in my magpie mind, that is so

intent upon saving the bits and pieces

in a kind of cheerful squalor, fiercely

hanging onto the stuff of daily life.

This morning one of the cats knocked the laundry hamper

over, and the resounding thwack! jerked me awake to the day;

the other one threw up

when I sat down to a peaceful cup of coffee.

I muse on the last of the roses,

tucked into a small goldfish bowl,

the goldfish long gone.

Didn't one of the kids

win that fish at a church fiesta?

What happened to it?

It wasn't Willie Mayes, who lived to an ancient age, and

my daughter has Romeo, who is so

old

that his scales have turned white, Romeo is a daily marvel.

And Lily and Lola lived to be three, they were the white mice

my son carried in his pocket to alarm female guests.

See what I mean?

What would this mess of a mind sustain itself with, if

it were forced to rely on its own insular resources?

On a desert island, or locked up somewhere?

Have all those books I read morphed into

this mysterious mish mosh?

Where are my real thoughts?

But I'm happy.

And the poetry surfaces often enough

that I'm on the edge of knowing that something good

may be going on in there.

I would forget it if I didn't write it down.

I hope I have a pen in my pocket

when I land on that island, where

in the silence

I am alone with me, alone on that island

every day.

© 2010 Charlotte Merrill Jensen