Hi dear readers,
Before you read this poem, I feel as if i should warn you that it talks about guns and alludes to the trauma that guns can cause. And if this would in any way provoke you, I wanted to give you the chance to not read today’s poem. But it didn’t feel right to leave you poem-less … so here, in case you want a poem that does not mention guns, is one from a year ago today about beets in which no one gets hurt.
Thank you for joining me for this daily practice. I am so grateful you’re in this with me.
Rosemerry
Ambush
It only shoots lasers,
I tell myself as the biathlon
skiers skate by with guns
strapped to their backs,
smiles wide on their faces.
I smile and wave back
and on this most blue
day of winter, I start weeping
in the middle of the perfectly
groomed corduroy track as my
heart falls apart again, because
apparently that’s what this heart
does when reminded what a trigger
can do. Corrine holds me
until the tears slow
and we stand there together
in the spruce and the snow
until I am again exactly here,
in this year, on these skis,
on this day, with this blue,
with this sharp burn of loss,
with this still pulsing love,
with these arms of a friend,
with this heart that after two
years is no less broken. Nor,
I notice, is this heart less whole.
I don’t hear a gunshot,
just as I didn’t then.
I wade into the silence
like a baptism.