New Year After Many Deaths

Perhaps I will take up fiction again.
Perhaps the life we live is stronger than the dead.
Perhaps those who just now passed are sending messages.
Perhaps the mourners are a little mad.

How to pick up the reins?
Don’t even have a horse these days.
I see so many wash clothes
And dust clothes and underwear
That all need cleaning along with
Our spirits.

How to do this?
Walk on a hilltop, a magnificent one.
Pet the cats until they purr fully.
Play with a granddaughter.
Sketch a magical world;
All sketches are touched with magic
So not to be fearful of missed strokes;
The loss is in not painting the lines at all!
Or writing them down.

Or as I several times did in my twenties,
The loss is in filling a poetry notebook
And leaving it on the seat of a car
In which I am a hitchhiker
With comb, $1 and my library card.

Are we all hitchhikers
In a huge and unfamiliar car?
We can at least be brave and
Ask for the ride,
Accept the adventure,
Whichever one is offered
To greet us and enrich us and
Beg for our best effort.

– Connie Madden