The Sunday Whirl thru jet-lag

Yesterday I felt headachy and blah when I started writing the Sunday Whirl. I finished it this morning and this morning I feel much, much better, but I thought that this poem was honest and still felt right so I didn’t rewrite it. I finished it and let it stand. 🙂

pay, stains, center, bell, dimension, intrigue,
magic, only, used, avenue, answer, change

They say the best way to survive an avalanche is to swim like hell, to go with the flow or you’ll pay for it, but I’ve spent several hours going with the flow and I feel myself sinking like lead.
My head is spinning.
It might be the air, it might be the water, it might be the fact that I haven’t been back long enough to actually realise the mountains aren’t cardboard cut-outs and I can’t knock them over to smash the whole city flat, change avenue to field.

Concentrate on shadow’s circle, sunny center.
See a million leaves worship simple, becoming gold in their skin.
Simplicity in yellowing, falling, swinging down to the path, another dimension of life, age spots, brown stains fraying around the edges.

There is no right answer, no magic solution. I’m used to it.
Leaning into the headache leads nowhere so I grab some water.
Each cupped life coming in handfuls in the chop of late afternoon glare.
A dog scrabbles after a ball, scraping and scratching his nails on the path, his tags tinkling bell, then crash cymbal then only bell until he turns back.
My nails leave little half-moon marks on my wrist.

Thinking is muddy, a muddy path and the splash of a step, intrigue in the spot of sun cooking rain from the ferns.
Green ferns patient in their green, green with dna that once saw the dinosaurs stomp thru the muggy humidity.
Brontosaur of a headache.
Stegosaur, stegosaur with crash cymbals.
Splash
AND THERE the poem flops down exhausted, grateful, wishing for the headache to stomp away just to lie in the sun on the rug.

Fancy that, darling.