Haven’t you also had that moment when you thought oh, no. what I am or what I do truly does not matter? it happens to me. now and then I start collecting ideas of who I am thinking external validation is relevant. and, well, have you ever seen a tumbleweed in real life? I have. I have. It blew right across the road in front of my car, at which point my Dad hollered look out, don't hit it those things are nasty! The dad who also told me it was better to flatten a squirrel (or hit a cat or a dog) than swerve and maybe break the car slash myself-- tumbleweeds don't have guts: they are wily, dried hanks freed from their foundations, pulled and pushed around going wherever they freakin please until you think (when one crosses your path): oh dang! this is no fluffy weed! this torrent deserves a name. Clara or Jared or Tina Tumblin' Turner-- some such. eventually it stops stuck up on a fence or a Saguaro, the like-- drops its packet where it lies. nature's got no time for my nonsense: contortions of truth worries on why when there's wind to blow clouds to squeeze seeds to move. better to trust oneself, whatever the shapes or turns. collect fallen cactus ribs and make something of it -- while there's still time.
It’s April, which is National Poetry Month.
I hope you enjoy reading as much poetry as you can stuff yourself with this month!
Please follow the link in the poem to my friend, writer Kate Mapother’s site “Life at the Bottom of the Canyon” where she describes building a door from fallen Saguaro cacti.
I have met a tumbleweed. My wife Mary Ann insisted we pick up one from the multitude as we drove through Western Kansas. Our kids were young. We put the god-awful prickly monster in the back of the mid-sized station wagon. We put Tommy in the back yard and watched him roll around for years until his fell apart into the grass. I still miss him.
Flatten a squirrel, but avoid the tumbleweed! Your poems are life lessons to me, Zed!