Yielding

When you rev your diesel 4 x 4 and congest Main Street with fumes and fury,
your pathetic bid to dominate and genital insecurities are on full display.

And when you write things like that, you’re displaying…
STOP! I know. But we’re human. We snipe.

You’re human. You give gifts.
We’re human. We give black eyes.

You’re human. You pull weeds.
We’re human. We pull rank.

You’re human. You prepare meals.
We’re human. We prepare for war.

You’re human. You seek the Truth.
We’re human. We seek revenge.

You’re human. You aspire to…
STOP! I can’t take another round. We no longer seem to aspire.

Let’s wait a bit before you look in the mirror this morning.
I wonder what a brush of hope on your cheeks might do.

Why bother? This is the way I look.

The eyebrows could be darker, more expressive.
And the lips. What do you think about ruby red?

STOP! I’m awake. I know my face. And my fate.

You know neither. Yield the right-of-way. Let them roar by.
Yielding feels like being gutted. I’m not good at sacrifice.

Come sit with me. I’ll braid your wispy hair,
and we can wash the dishes together.

That sounds like a terrible idea.

I’ll rinse. You dry. And thus, our light will have shone where it matters.
We don’t dry our dishes. We let the air do that.

That’s right. We’ll let the air do that.

****** ****** ****** ****** ******

For more uplifting, cheery poems and conversations just like this, you can order our book from the YOU KNOW WHO online and for a mere $13.99, you can torment your soul every day. Also, I am now posting on Substack, and may drift there as my primary place to post.

If it wasn’t so hot, I’m sure I’d have more profound thoughts and find something meaningful in the riffraff of this day, but the idea of cold water is as far as I can go right now. Our laundry is currently flapping in the beastly wind. I can go to the clothesline and bring it in, but I can’t think. Even the effort necessary to generate coherence could send sparks flying from my overheated fears into the parched undergrowth of my soul, and a fiery mayhem could ensue. I worry about the trees.

“Stop it,” God says. “You engage in ridiculous amounts of pointless worry. The souls of the trees are not at all like yours. They are fine. Fine, tall, and willing.”

“Willing?” I ask. There’s a pause. The earth wipes its sweltering forehead. I have horrid visions of blazing forests.

“Yield,” God says from a triangular highway sign.

“Unlikely,” I say. I don’t have the energy to yield today. I’m not a natural yielder. I wish I were a tree, but they don’t live forever. I wish I were new and shiny. I wish I were a radio, a cup of good coffee, a perfect banana, a crisp apple, a purple gladiola, or a row of corn soon to be knee high. I pretend that yielding is not required of such embodied objects.

“I’m sad, God,” I say. “Sad and hot. Hot and sad.” The little faith I have is not shaped like a mustard seed or a triangular highway sign. It’s a cheatgrass barb stuck in my sock, irritating my ankle to death. If I could find it, I’d yank it out, but it is embedded deeply in the weave of the yarn.

“Throw the socks away,” God says, and hands me a sweating glass of lemonade.

I take a sip and consider the barefoot road of the blessed faithless. In some ways, it looks easier, less conflicted, less painful, and if these were ordinary socks, I might comply. I might peel them off, throw them away, and rid myself of that exasperating, chronic chaffing—that annoying, inflaming, intrusion of barbed, fertile seed. Someone knitted these socks for me. I don’t know why I wore them through the deceptive, predatory grass, but I did.

“No.” I shake my head. “I can’t throw them away. But thanks for the permission. And the lemonade. That really hit the spot.”

“You’re welcome,” God says, in an approving voice. “It’s an old family recipe.” God speaks from within the twisted rind of a well-squeezed lemon. I realize that this fragrant, yellow God will soon rest on the unstable surface of our compost pile, momentarily brilliant, but willing to yield to the heat as it hastens the eternal dismantling.

Tag: Yielding

Heat