Poem of the Week

I get up read the paper drive to school plan teach grade plan teach grade visit university search academic mysteries read texts write papers drive home twenty miles over if following Speedy Gonzalez and his Andale cries spend one two hours with my love catch one whose line can’t see the warning sign crash into bed read then sleep five hours and then…. get up read the paper drive to school…

Whose line am I living anyway?

Whose lie?

No breathe time,

no time to sit in plastic green lawn chairs

staring at Orion while smoking a Swisher Sweet

drinking a Mudslide.

No time to plant, to cultivate

the fields of relationship

allowing them to germinate

and bloom daffodils.

No time to plunge into your retinas

and feel the sting of your soul’s chlorine.

I am brushing off my 12 gauge,

I am watching for Gonzalez,

I am stepping from my car,

Where Life Road crosses Time.

I am weighing consequences,

in my asking, in my searching,

With my crosshairs on this rodent,

My world shifts, realigned.

~ Minnie Bruce Pratt ~

I am —

perhaps unfortunate

in that the separation of myself

from the ‘who I am’

in faith remains

impossible

despite the distance of time.

I am —

despite the desire to divorce myself

from my family, tradition and rules,

to break out and be

my own man.

I am —

despite my excuses

of ‘I used to be,’

‘formerly was,’

‘grew up as.’

I am —

breathe….breathe….whisper

“Mennonite.”

WAS!

Still

my history bleeds

through this heart

pumpa, pumpa, pumpa.

I cannot escape

and if I could…

If I could sharpen these finger nails,

aim them at my left breast,

then plunge them,

pierce this flesh,

splaying these incarcerating ribs apart,

then, in wrapping my fingers around ‘it,’

yank,

where would I be without my heart?

Who would I be?

How long would I live?

Bleed?

Pumpa, pumpa, pump—a.

I am incapable of forgetting who I am.

I cannot be

who I am not.

I am —

despite the electronic current coursing through my house,

despite the lack of a buggy in my barn,

despite my head unadorned by a black hat and beard,

I am —

the product of 15 generations

of pacifist culture.

I am Mennonite.

I am who I am.