Clown Skeleton

author’s note:

What if every day was Halloween?


CLOWN SKELETON

While sneaking around backstage
after class one afternoon
I pulled a curtain in a dingy dusty storeroom
and found a skeleton standing at a blackboard.
No lower jaw, so no death grin.

To calm my sudden shock
I clapped a silly baseball cap on that bone head.

I would mock the specter that mocks us.

But then another idea came to me:
I should confront my fear.
I would confront the unknown
by peering into those dark eye sockets.

Maybe I’d sense the unseen
the great mystery—
the invisible realm.

But no—
though I stared into those empty pools
until my eyes burned
I felt only a dull negative:
the absence of life.

However
my neck hairs did rise
when I posed this question:

might I likewise end up
abandoned in a backroom?—
a clown set of bones—
just another blank line?

Stunned by the thought
I walked away from that encounter
with the clock ticking in my head again
but louder, louder this time—
stirring a sense of urgency in me.

I needed to fill that line
with something…something
that might last after my last breath.

mythsteps · Clown Skeleton

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© 2024, Michael R. Patton

Saguaro & Tumbleweed

author's note:

“I learn by going where I have to go.”
              -- Theodore Roethke


SAGUARO & TUMBLEWEED

When I feel as if I'm being
pushed around
by unseen forces beyond
my control or understanding
I remind myself:

the tumbleweed
despite its suffering
sows seeds as it bounces.

And when growth feels
so painfully tedious
I tell myself:

to grow an arm
the saguaro needs
seventy slow years

but then what a strong appendage!

And when I again feel the need
to help those who struggle as I do today
I comfort myself with a hope:

if in time, some notice
what sprouted
along my tumbling bumbling path

or notice
I added another arm
or two or three in this life

then maybe some of that some
will feel encouraged
as they grow and sow in the desert.

© 2019, Michael R. Patton
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