IN THE DIRECTION YOU WANT TO GO

IN THE DIRECTION YOU WANT TO GO

                      susan ambrosino

You'll never run off with some clothes

A debit card and your Toyota Prius

Tearing across the country

To some out-of-the-way desert spot

In the wild west

Instead you spend much time walking

Carefully through live trees

Dodging roots, stumps, low branches

With the thought you'd like to change your name to

Moves Through Branches

Or

In Pursuit of Nothing

It doesn't matter how long your walk will be

As long as it's enough to renew the history of many years.

If you need to get back to the house

For a glass of white wine

Or apple cinnamon tea

Never thinking about the connectivity of events

It's ok

You just go home.

The world bends

Can be worked like clay

If you talk to it

If you let it talk to you

Like it did when you were twelve

A newborn woman forever skating

At Coffman's Pond during Christmas week   

The world an unexplained innocent opening.

Your own private mountain

Starts with one stone every day

One that just fits in the palm of your hand

Drop it in the center of your yard.

You never know if what you say will make a difference

So you just go home

And go about your business

Wondering why it is you are still here

Steering the wobbly wheelbarrow of your choices

In the direction you want to go

Thinking you passed through grace by special selection.

You set yourself up

Blindly planning your life without knowing

That it was fine to be exactly who and what you are

Taking each day in small amounts

A type of slow graze that led you home

With doors suddenly opening

You standing surprised

Gazing into what you thought was the wrong vestibule

Thinking yourself in the midst of strangers

Living another life

With a future to fret about

And the need to invent sins for the confessional.

When you were six

The building across the street burned to the ground

You watched from the kitchen window

The amazement of flames and smoke

Fire trucks all night long

Then missed school the next day

Went to the RKO movie theatre

Ate popcorn

That's what mattered the most

The popcorn

With lots of butter and salt.

Being afraid of dying is silly.

When you're dead you don't know it.

It's like the unborn being afraid of life.

And you can only hope the little pains of daily life

Go on and on.