Personal Day

I’m taking a personal day because I haven’t finished my coffee yet. I’ve reheated it twice and I’m going to finish it. I’m going to finish. I’m eating warm pumpkin bread and drinking my coffee. I’m watching the storm outside. It keeps flicking the lights on and off, the wires keep tripping over themselves. I told myself earlier that I want to be the kind of poet who stands out in the middle of the lawn in a rain/wind storm and so I did.

I went out like a crazy bat woman and checked on my bearded iris bulbs and two had their spidery legs up and writhing and so I bent down with the rain at my side and the wind slapping gusts and leaves and water around and I bent down and dug into the earth. I replanted those bulbs. I replanted them. The trees moshing up and down, I stood in the middle of the lawn. What a rush, the wind said to me going by, what a rush.

Now my clothes smell like wet cotton and I’m under a blanket, eating dirt and pumpkin bread and feeling less afraid, feeling like I’ve caught some energy of the wind. What a rush, she keeps saying. What a rush.