This sad, sweet, tragic, Fourth of July world

Imagine This 
by Freya Manfred 

When you’re young, and in good health,
you can imagine living in New York City,
or Nepal, or in a tree beyond the moon,
and who knows who you’ll marry: a millionaire,
a monkey, a sea captain, a clown.

But the best imaginers are the old and wounded,
who swim through ever narrowing choices,
dedicating their hearts to peace, a stray cat,
a bowl of homemade vegetable soup,
or red Mountain Ash berries in the snow.

Imagine this: only one leg and lucky to have it,
a jig-jagged jaunt with a cane along the shore,
leaning on a walker to get from grocery to car,

smoothing down the sidewalk on a magic moving chair,
teaching every child you meet the true story

of this sad, sweet, tragic, Fourth of July world.


"Imagine This" by Freya Manfred from Speak, Mother. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2015.

What We Might Be, What We Are

What We Might Be, What We Are 
by X. J. Kennedy

If you were a scoop of vanilla
And I were the cone where you sat,
If you were a slowly pitched baseball
And I were the swing of a bat,

If you were a shiny new fishhook
And I were a bucket of worms,
If we were a pin and a pincushion,
We might be on intimate terms.

If you were a plate of spaghetti
And I were your piping-hot sauce,
We’d not even need to write letters
To put our affection across,

But you’re just a piece of red ribbon
In the beard of a Balinese goat
And I’m a New Jersey mosquito.
I guess we’ll stay slightly remote.


"What We Might Be, What We Are" by X.J. Kennedy from Exploding Gravity. © Little Brown, 1992.