photoart: sharon auberle
ON THE MEANING OF
by Linda Back
Mckay
This is what
life does.
It wakes you
in the morning
before the
morning
glories open
and gives you
the sound of
your mother’s voice.
Life spreads
itself across
the ceiling to
make you think
you are penned
in, but that
is just
another gift. Life takes
what you
thought you couldn’t live
without and
gives you a heron instead.
And a
dragonfly, stitching its way
through the
milkweed. Life contains all
of your tears
in a vessel
shaped like
hands in prayer.
Life is shape,
sight, sound, bone.
It whispers
and sings and holds
you and you
almost never feel it.
You push your
way from phase to phase.
You are a
horse with blinders.
You think you
are pulling, but you
are being
driven.
While going
about your solitary life,
one hoof in front
of the other,
real life is
turning the stars,
like mirrors,
in your direction.
~ first
published in Verse Wisconsin
