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Apr 23

Weightless

In too many bedrooms I’ve tried to recall
The tenderness I had for an un-fragile thing,
A classroom turtle,
Whose name I must have lost
Soon after my own left the tag of my sweater.

What I still have is the anger
For Kenny Stults,
The one I hated the most already,
When he dropped our pet
From the roof of the gym,
Shouting, “Turtles can fly!”
While he proved that they couldn’t.

Maybe someday, instead of lying
Stiff on my back while my life falls out,
The winds will shift and I’ll soar for a bit
Grasping wildly with fingers like wings.

5 Comments

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  1. sara / Apr 23 2009

    This is lovely.
    I especially love the line “Grasping wildly with fingers like wings.”

    So good!

  2. hudsonhongo / Apr 24 2009

    Thank yeh kindly.
    This is probably the most pleasant thing I’ve written in quite some time.

  3. Cynthia / Apr 24 2009

    This reminds me of that lovely Rumi poem:

    Something opens our wings.
    Something makes boredom and hurt disappear.
    Someone fills the cup in front of us:
    We taste only sacredness.

    – Rumi (1207-1273)

  4. dodoisdead / Jun 9 2009

    only sacredness is lost in our everydayness, all the time, everyday

  5. Alien Guardian / Dec 20 2011

    This is beautiful!

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