But I would rather have done what I have done
Fred Rogers
Basically, I got as old as I could.
Now I am myself as I always was,
disguised as myself as I have become.
Same as when I open the front door
and the outside rushes in, displacing what’s inside.
Such a relief to be able
to head down the sidewalk of my habitual
interior, where rain-crazed sparrows sound
like the beginning of a good idea,
and brown-speckled gum-pink fallen camellia blossoms
show up everywhere like failures
that hope at least to be instructive.
Three-year-olds gather them now
and shake them over each other to see what happens.
How do both invention and decision
move a body while pulling in opposite directions?
And why is the stillest moment the one of transition?
Now is the time to let out all my breath
so that I can sink to the very bottom and sit
with certainty,
uncertainty, certainty, uncertainty—
I know what comes next but sometimes
I have to come all the way down here to see it.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 23, Issue 1.
Nina Lindsay is the author of two collections of poetry, Because and Today’s Special Dish, from Sixteen Rivers Press. Her poems have appeared in the Colorado Review, Fence, the Kenyon Review, Mudlark, Prairie Schooner, Third Coast, and other journals. Nina lives and works in Oakland CA.
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