How do you tell when the time has come
to ease off a subject? To let things go,
sleeping dogs lie and all that. How do you know
if this is wisdom or quitting?
Giving up the fight or turning a new leaf?
You could decide that nothing matters
but the pattern of rain running in rivulets
down the dirt driveway of my childhood home.
Into our miniature landscape of canals and bridges
and homes waiting for destruction.
These were built in anticipation
of afternoon thunderstorms which came
everyday after school.
Back then these subjects were like mud houses,
meant for destroying in the most joyous fashion with lots of giggling.

Nothing matters
but that morning on Butler’s Bald
when the clouds were below us
and the mountain tops like islands
surrounding our sleepy morning dreams.
But these snapshots, these feelings,
aren’t they subjects, too?
To be thought on and analyzed?
Or forgot?
Now I’m back in the rot of indecision.
Now I decide to fight.
Like trying to convince
the high school English teacher
that John Proctor was not a hero,
just a man of the rather annoying variety.
Living with your sins, fixing your mistakes,
sticking around to take care of your family
despite your own despair…
isn’t that the braver option? Sticking around to fight.
Oh, sure, you’d burn anyway.
But, sometimes, isn’t preserving dignity just an excuse to quit?

God and sex and murder and war and rape
and pain and inequality and just plain meanness.
Focus on the beauty or fight to the death?
Maybe death is beautiful.
Change is slow, but it does happen.
We’re slowly evolving, creeping and crawling,
Despite our bellyaching and our stalling.

09/07/2006

Posted on 09/07/2006
Copyright © 2025 Tracy Ellen