Walking back from the grocery store

Link to poem read by author


The daylight crescent moon

was slipping on down towards afternoon,

hanging by a thread from an unseen wishing star.

Tipping and tumbling,

the pale moon had spilled out most of its cream.

And now I have nearly forgotten my nighttime dream.

Instead, I turned at the near corner rather than proceeding on ahead

and shortly a silent Furbie sitting at a yard sale caught my eye -

unwinking.

The woman standing there with her coffee cup would let it go to a good home –

she said.

The Furbie had no batteries and there was no guarantee that the well-worn toy would speak –

let alone tell me what I wanted so dearly to know.

Still I let go of what I had been so wishfully thinking of for now - this moment now here.

And so with my groceries in my one hand,

I took that old Furbie up with the other empty hand -

the hand that had been holding onto thin air -

I held the thing in my hand.

And then I saw a monkey matching card game marked at fifty cents –

that too, I added.

And a stacking up wood blocks and marble toy that seemed too good to let go

for only two bucks more.

Though with hardly a second look, I passed easily on by a perfectly rusty metal chair –

also only presently priced at a mere two dollars.

It seemed as if that old chair might as well once have been painted green as blue –

but I was done looking for what I no longer really needed anymore.

But the chair might indeed once have been blue.

Who knew?

The folks running the yard sale offered to toss in a single postcard into my hands so full of little

for nothing.

The card that I had perused and put down and then had picked up anyway.

That particular postcard of a painting of pretty people partying

in a long gone night club so long ago.

And just so you know,

the painting was called ‘Nightlife.’

It had been painted well before even I had even eventually ever been born -  

painted by a painter named Motley, but what did it all matter?

And to what point – all these words spilling out of my head?

Still I added the card to my negligible burden of stuff

and I walked on.

And then there appeared somewhat rusted ahead of me –

nearly all of a maple tree’s red pointed maple leaves,

waiting on the ground for the rake …

or the wind …

or the coming winter …

or my shuffling feet ...

which ever would come first in order of happening.

Hardly questions even worth asking –

I suppose I might then well have well said.

After all, the branches above my head had just let them go –

all of the rusted red maple leaves -

the branches had just let them go.

So what choice did I ever even have?

The sky so high up above me held back the night for a morning–

the sky –

bright October sky –

sky blue.

And then once again

I was day dreaming

of you.