If I had more sense I’d turn my back, say, “No!”
Instead I attend to innumerable philanthropic chores—kid
care, housecare, the world’s many woes.
As my dad always said about certain miserable
cronies of my mom, “She’s a glutton
for punishment.”
Certainly wish I was not so driven.
What if I cried more easily?  Or
like I used to, flashed that idiot grin?

Twenty years ago, longhaired and dancing, no day
had a goal.  Today, though snow
has kept me home, I’m moving—chore-list,
looseends, grasping opportunity
everywhere I turn midst
running children, slushy traffic.
Navigating the haphazards, I stop
at the convenience corner magazine rack—
Promises!  Sexy men in Cosmopolitan.  I want
to see!  But shamed and hurried beneath the eyes
of the big-bellied counterman, can’t find
the page.  Pictures of naked willing men—
is that what today’s career woman needs?

Grin like an idiot, I remind myself,
in the grocery, almost bumping into
one of the distinguished older men
in town, retired school board treasurer, stiff
and upright as ever, with a great red
drinker’s nose.  Our passions!  How they pull us
into secret ways. Then the damage shows. 
In the meantime, I advise myself,
a glass of wine tonight just before you start
bombarding QUIET! at the kids
dancing through the house—dance
DANCE—they fling themselves so wildly!
Like I used to, my curls flying.

Let wild music roll! I remind myself,
old music from the important
past and new, because don’t new paths
make tomorrow’s memories? 
How little I understand of this, My Life,
which I have made, though somehow
I’ve gotten lost in it.  Only left with an illusion
of control in all the clenched and spasmed
muscles of this mortal flesh.

Get loose woman!  I whisper.  Get down!  
off this high horse greed for goodness. 
Walk this earth, monkey toes gripping.
Howl your pleasures and your grief,
or maybe, just pretend
reality’s your chosen plaything.

Don’t dodge circumstance!  Just jump
onto its back. 
Ride it as it pushes you
over the edge
of every ordinary ecstasy.
                                    11/25/1987