SingingFrogPress

My Entire Life

            ~from a Cheerios Box “What makes your heart beat a little faster?”
I don’t know about
you, but the doctor’s office
sitting in that impossible to love gown
on the examining table,
my bare feet going clammy,
while the doctor, her high heels tapping
the tile floor as she moves
around me, pressing the metal disk
against my chest and back,
makes my heart speed up
so noticeably

I suddenly, deliberately begin to breathe longer,
slower waves of air, ushered
down through my chest
into my belly as though I can magically
keep slowing it down.
This fist of muscle continuously
working since before I was born—slow it
down—my breath, my anxious heart-
felt longing for what?

The medical seal of approval
            For an aging lady, you’re doing ok?
Or for arrival into that emptied out moment
when the in-breath merges with the out, merges
with the in so gradually
it might be the smallest seething
of the tiniest ripple of a Lake Michigan wavelet
nibbling its way round my five-year old toes,
up the packed damp beach sand
and back again as I stare

at the minute bits of fine crushed
stones, shining and dimming as the clear water
swells and sinks away around them.
And all that time she’s got her ear to my thump,
my tha-thud, my kerchunk—and she may not
know it, but it’s my
entire life she’s listening to.
                                                                 8/4/2010

8 comments

  3. So happy to see another poem from you. Wishing you and your loved ones a great New Year.

    I’m doing OK, but am no longer able to drive to NY, due to my ankle. Last time I made the trip, so much driving messed up some of the hardware in my ankle, and I had to have a third surgery. The surgeon was cross that I have driven so far. Ah well, we live with the consequences of our choices.

    Be well, Adair

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    • Thank you Adair. I understand so well. Everything we do as we get older is a calculation of the benefits or costs of any action we want to take. And of course we’re more and more aware how long lasting the aftereffects of some of these decisions might be. I’m always pushing myself to do more than I physically want to do, especially in this recent very cold weather. I haven’t been outdoors at all today because it was so very cold. Yesterday I moved snow around on the porch and different parts of the walkways around the house, and the driveway. I hope you’re able to get out and do things nearby that nourish your spirit! much love, Sue

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  4. absolutely astounding – such flow, like a heartbeat rhythm, I kept moving through the lines … up, down, up, down like ekg, like life, like delight!

    thank you for sharing!

    Sydney schardt

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