8.21.09 About An Object
Pink. It is pink,
like everything she owns
is pink.
Tiny. It is tiny,
like everything she owns
except her ideas.
Thursday she played
with (pink) tissue paper the way
my cats gnaw on ribbon:
Free, colorful,
and un-dampened by
posture, awareness.
Starch-free spine,
she hugs, she bends, she wraps
herself around the world. It hugs back.
(If I was young
and I am young but
not young,
If I was young I hope
I could turn life into a chocolate milkshake
and be the straw,
the way she is, she does.
Safety. There is such safety
in not knowing you need safety.)
It catches her, or tries to.
It is a seat, a chair, a container
for the uncontainable,
a plastic reincarnation of
god’s palm, holder for wiggly
little lives.
It is a car-seat,
left behind in the back of my
2005 Honda civic.
Friday morning,
I took them to the airport.
Friday afternoon,
I was startled to find in my car a bright pink plastic
reminder they haven’t left me, reminder that
we all try to sit still, toddlers in the hand of
the universe.
Prayer, like a seatbelt,
keeps us in. Together.
--Ruth Baumann, Aug. 2009
