All my life I have heard
that all endurance means
is putting one foot in front
of the other one.

I never did understand
what it meant but
decided that I must
keep on walking.

You will find me early
with dew on the white fence

mood of the morning eye.
Blue, mine softly open,

then mid-day becomes tight-fisted.
If you listen you hear

summer songs of openings
and slight awakenings

within the morning sky.
As the sun races across heaven,

only then will I die.
A cup of softness that I offer the world

with a white and light pink
center to lure a wandering

bee before he gets too laden
with the day’s pollen, too heavy

to fly. What do I have to offer—
brief beauty, solo acrobatics while

I gently pull the electric blue
from the brevity of the sky.

My conscience sits
like a box
on my stairway.

Go away, I say.
You should be
nicer, he says.

Then like quicksilver
he flows into
the street

announcing all my
past sins
to the neighbors.

No wonder this neighborhood
is as unfriendly as a shark
on steroids, I say.

Grow
up!
he says.

If you see my conscience
sunning himself on some corner
leave him there and don’t

disturb him.
I don’t want
him back.

I start as a rumble
deep in the chest.
Erupt as a deep-veined
pocket of gold—
the dynamite in your
ink-stone,
much too close
to the flame.
Ambience is quite
the fashion,
yet I’m not too dry
and not too wet.
I flow with the ongoing current
that allows me
to be swept
up in the same water,
tag the undercurrent
for soliloquist games
and end up on the bank
to dry in the warm
autumn sun as a poem.

Pamela Otlowski

May 6th, 2008 7:24 am

Last week
I answered the phone while reading poems by Rolfe Humphries.
It was late, that was my excuse, and I thought my son’s doctor
was the man who was going to leave me a message about
how I was suppose to be paying for yard service.

Last week
we discovered a lump the size of a quarter
in the back of my son’s neck and took him to the doctor.
I had plenty of worries last week but we added one more.

Last week
I wrote twelve poems, six of them litanies
and drove all over: to the library, doctor’s office, home.
I could face the world, but this week I need you to read
this poem so I feel less alone.

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