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The Issue of Cranberry Juice

by Bruce W Niedt

At the conference, I take my lunch alone,

with a book, at a large round table.

I twist open a bottle of cranberry juice,

return to my book for a minute,

then pick up the bottle again

and give it a vigorous shake.

 

Released from the confines of the cap

like a liquid genie,

the juice is happy to splash,

and it issues everywhere –

on the table, on my lunch,

my book, my clothes, my face.

Puddles of red have formed around me;

juice drips from my nose.

This is not what I would have wished for.

 

I look up sheepishly, and no one has noticed,

or at least acknowledged that they noticed.

But the warm flush of humiliation

still rises to my face, as if to match

the color of the wayward juice.

I scurry to the men’s room,

wash myself off,

grab a handful of paper towels,

run back and mop up the damage,

but still I leave residual stickiness.

 

That afternoon in a workshop,

the instructor asks us to write,

“I forgive myself for…”

and list everything we can think of

to complete the sentence.

Among all the bigger concerns, I write

in my cranberry-spotted clothes,

“I forgive myself for absent-mindedly

spilling juice all over at lunchtime.”

 

On my mountain of issues,

it is only a new pebble.

Yet it feels so good

to kick it down the slope.

 

09/21/2001

Posted on 09/21/2001
Copyright © 2024 Bruce W Niedt

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Meghan Helmich on 09/24/08 at 07:34 PM

bruce, you're such a cutie pie

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