Good Bones
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
-Maggie Smith
I don’t know her work. Maggie Smith. This is the first I have seen. I love it so much. And her too. I love her so much.
Her poem is going around the Internet (that I got just before the plague came down on us. It (the internet) comes on a radio wave to a disk the size of a thanksgiving serving trey. It stands on a silver pole attached to my cabin). The poem seems so hum... appropriate.
It is almost sunrise. The eastern sky is lightening. Rain continues to fall. Red wings, cardinals, finches, and sparrows hunker in mesquite trees verging on new leaf. The feeder filled to overflowing runneth over with black oil sunflower seeds. Looking delicious, glistening- they spill to the wet ground..
In this early blue gray world water droplets in clouds above line up like paratroopers about to jump to earth.
Giver her acid they yell!
Good morning everyone!
Greetings from the sky!
Ready or not!
Here We Come!