Sunday, January 21, 2007

Credo

John and I were eating leftover Chinese tonight, and I decided to open one of the fortune cookies our favorite restaurant supplies in such abundance. We don't eat them, because they taste like cardboard, but we love the sound our black lab Obie makes when he chews them.

John's fortune read, "Where there is no vision, the people perish". As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up. We were thinking of sending it to Dubya.

Mine read, "You are surrounded by fortune hunters". Do you think they're trying to get their hands on my disability check?

I went digging through musty boxes in the basement family room this evening, looking for some music to scan for digital collage backgrounds. While I was there, I found this long-lost poem that I must have written at least ten years ago.


CREDO
...
this is the meaning of life.
...
you awake this foggy morning
put on first one sock,
then the other
...
tie your shoes in that peculiar, backwards way.
...
you go out.
...
and when the hump-backed lady
with the cherry rouge
knocks askew the pyramid of Kleenex
in the corner store that serves that stinking coffee--
...
you will help.
...
build the boxes
very carefully
into rows
...
dust her glasses that have fallen to the floor
and straighten out the earpiece.
...
and when she leans to thank you with her whiskey breath
...
you will see she knows
you are both pilgrims
dying, but not waning
in the self-same skies and ways.
~~~

1 comment:

May Terry said...

Thank you so much!!