Harriet Powers

December 27

Harriet Powers

Like a creature with a long tale told in a hushed voice. The whispers tell the story with inflection and innuendo. I slink away from the mirror and the disembodied voices it engenders. Thirty versions of my past spin away from me in the eddies of time gone and misremembered. I gather my fragments and tatters; I thread my needle and sit to quilt me into the present. The odd assortment left from all which has worn out or been pulled apart fit in a pinwheel pattern and turn toward a better day. The night is warmer for now I have it covered, settled and safe, perhaps now I might even sleep.

Use a crutch if you have to but move

*

Best so Far

Being the best so far doesn’t mean so awful much

Makes you the current standard bearer is all

Not even keeper of the watch.

I can’t give you a torch to hold

Certainly not a title either of Daddy or of Din

You will find your way through this morass

Keep your courage if not your cast

But this is a hard thing my dear, dear friend

Because the old tricks they don’t work no more

And the new tools ain’t broke in.

And lest I should forget

Just because you say you have a sense of humor about yourself

Doesn’t mean you have it

And when you try to take me to hand

It doesn’t mean you ken it

And all the days that dreams drift by

It doesn’t mean they’re yours and mine

For time must play its evil trick

And leave good things to pass by us

But this doesn’t mean that hope is lost

Or even that I’ve found it

Only that peace is a thing which seeps

And pressing will confound it

So maybe when you are pushing seventy

And are sober nearly as I am now

I will read this to you

And we will laugh

For by then being the best so far

Will matter a little more and hurt a little less.