By 9 a.m.

the daily fight with gravity
has already been lost.
I wake so buoyed by possibilities
and the remnants of dreams

I am entirely weightless, I float
above my stonebound self
a dancing particle of light, one of
the silvered ripples wreathing out and out
from where a stone was thrown,

the fugitive quickness of minnows
in a mountain pool, dipped up
one morning moment only
by the thirst of seven-year-old hands.

But by the time I put my foot
into slipper I’ve taken on the load
of everything that’s lain in wait all night
(the way I hung out waiting for my father
to have finished his coffee and cards
and come out of his morning funk
himself again, ready to lift me).

The same old words, thick crusted gray
and slow, massing like barnacles
on a beached ship, the wrack
of all those others’ final storms
calm now because utterly spent.

Instead, let me leaven and rise
knowing quite nothing from before.
Beginner’s mind, the teishos say, open
again to every lovely loopy possibility.


—Christie