Relearning Gravity
“At fifty you know who you are.”
—email from a friend
Enlightenment wears off,
or maybe you get used to it.
Gurus never tell you
chanting isn’t everything.
I used to float while driving,
window cracked an inch
for my soul’s silver string,
but now I know I’m happy
as I’ll ever be, relearning
gravity three times a week
at the curling center down the hill,
while eBay helps rebuild
my comic book collection.
“You’ll never be famous,”
the mirror confesses while shaving,
“so why not have fun?”
I know Lorine Niedecker
wrote her best lines after fifty,
but lately I’d rather swap lies
at the bar than write poems.
A trilobite sits on my desk,
paperweight immortalized
by time, that kind Medusa.
All morning we’ve been watching
vapor trails dissolving
in the window’s blue abyss.
—Michael Kriesel, Wausau, WI
