And my mind is in a state of mush. Peace to your ♥ !
Stuck is a State of Mind
Stuck is a state of mind. Sure, this house is stuck to its foundation
more securely than gum to the roof of one’s mouth, but think of it
as the base of a diving board for launching thoughts into the blue.
Cowabunga! Cannonballs and bellyflops! The sky pool is as ever
before and never before, its same-old, same-old clouds newly
numinous, figments of imagination (a boat? an ice cream cone?).
The sun goldens the air. Why is the cornflower bloom above us
connoted with sadness? The world is topsy-turvy: you can quote
me on that. But going back—I wasn’t stuck in grade three when
summer was free. I lapped up the shade, made the breeze do
my bidding, like a slave fanning a sultan. Nothing planned, and
still the pin oak leaves went whispering away, our lazy secret.
My mind ranged over the fence: “the grass is always greener”
but I was content to survey my realm from a blanket “throne”
upon the ground. The mind is agile, far more agile than fragile;
with proper exercise, we shall see what we shall see. My children
shriek “Eek! A spider in the kitchen!” I have already spied her
elsewhere, she with her small black arachnid ways. I have my
glooming gray days climbing mental walls. High enough, I hope,
to drop into a vineyard in Tuscany and loll among the grapes.
(“Wine is bottled poetry” said Stevenson, who went swinging
“[u]p in the air and over the wall”.) Perhaps there is the getaway
Toni Morrison assures me I will recognize upon arrival: “the vision
of a place you’ve had in your mind all along” where it’s “almost
as if you’ve been away and in this place you meet yourself again.”
Hello, dearheart. Notice, dear fellow earthlings, how I perch
on my Amish rocker, handcrafted with curlicues of actual limbs.
Not rooted to this spot. Not glued to my seat. Perched. Winging it.
© Stephanie Malley
NaPoWriMo20 Day 25 - Use a long poem by James Schuyler as a guidepost for your poem. Thank you to Maureen Thorson at NaPoWriMo.net for the prompt.
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