the crash...a poem

My life is but a barren wasteland of colored flower petals and grasshoppers,

Grasshoppers who hop away before I can take a picture.


Solitary zinnias reaching skyward,


Empty day after empty day.


My life has no purpose.

No direction.


My life is a birdhouse of hopelessness,


Flowers twining,

Choking.


My life is a sea of flower arranging skills that I do not possess,


Possesionless skills,


That I do not possess.


My garden cries out, "Hey lady, you can't get us hooked on Miracle Grow and then expect us to go cold turkey just because that whole wedding thing is over."


But I turn away,

Deaf to their cries.


Lonely onions sit in clay pots of solitude.


Why?

Why!!

Who in their right mind plants a single onion in a clay pot?

Meanwhile, their siblings shout out from their raised garden bed prison,


"You promised to thin us when you planted us too closely together way back in April!"

Promises broken,

Broken.

I ignore their voices,

Numb to their pain.


The screech of magpies fills the air,

Magpies, magpies, everywhere.

But still, I refuse to put a picture of a hateful magpie on my blog,

So they screech...and mock,

Hateful, catfood eating vipers of despair.

They haunt me.


White cosmos hug my birdbath


The birdbath in which no bird will bathe,


Birdless bath of emptiness.


Big Mable floats on the pond....a big, orange platform of loneliness.


She has no purpose,

No direction.

Her Adirondack chair moving glory days are over,


Floating,

Floating,

Aimless drifting.




The zipline of death sits silent,


A lonely cable, stretching to nowhere.


Zipping soldiers, gone back to the desert.


Zipping husbands, gone back to work.


Zipping grooms, no longer upside down.


No one died on the zipline of death.

Alas, even yours truly lived to tell the tale.

The tale of a groom who wouldn't let his mother back down the tree when she had second thoughts and saw her life flash before her eyes,

The very mother who gave birth to all nine pounds of him and lovingly protected him from all danger,

Yes, that is the mother that he would not let back down the tree.

The tale of a husband who promised to love and to cherish and to catch me when I got to the other end.

Thank you for catching me, dear husband.

No, I did not die on that fateful day,

Dare I say, it was actually kind of fun.

Big, huge sigh of relief for all who lived through the zipline of death.


The Bride zips,

Zips in her wedding dress,


Twice, no less.


Tiny droplets of water bead up on her pretty white train,

Droplets that say, "This girl is awesome!"

Talking droplets.

But droplets are not enough,

We must find a fountain.


These droplets do not bead up on her dress of loveliness,

But we hang it up on the back porch and it is good as new in the morning.


Zipping, dripping, fountain dwelling bride of beauty.


Rings.


Rings on fingers,

Rings on fingers that are driving Eastward.

Away,

Away,

Far, far away.

Come back, ringed fingers!

Come back, desert soldier!

Come back, friends and family!

I miss you!


The end.