You can listen
to the news,
you can express
your views,
you can point your toes
when you dance,
but the future, my friend
will unroll like a scroll
and there won’t be
a thing there by chance.

There are things
that you hear,
there are things
that you fear,
there are demons
inhabiting dreams;
but events that unfold,
or so I’ve been told,
are not the results
of man’s schemes.

So retire your talk
and just go for a walk,
look up at the stars overhead,
and be thankful that you
have no claim on the view,
and then, laugh, be happy,
go to bed.

Have you ever done something
and then could not believe
it could possibly have been you?

Have you ever said something
and then cringed when you heard it
exiting your mouth?

That would be me, sometimes . . .

Or, while mentally calculating
your accumulating grocery bill,
have you run into a friend
only to completely lose count?

I have stood in front of the door to my home
trying to lock or unlock the door
using the keyless entry fob from my car.

I have done this --- more than once.

I have, months after getting rid of that car,
searched for its keyless entry fob
on my keychain.

I have spent hours and days
searching for glasses on my head,
for keys that I was holding,
for the purse on my shoulder,
and have managed to miss them completely.

I have called information for a number,
written it down,
and then had to call them back
because I misplaced the number before I could redial the phone.

I have neglected friends and family,
duties and responsibilities,
not from lack of love
or sound intention,
but merely by allowing myself to be distracted.

If I had followed up
on what I knew at seventeen
whales, sharks, mankind ---
might already be saved.

Who knows what my focused mind might have accomplished?

But instead
I put myself to sleep
because the real world
was far too much to bear,
and living in books and dreams
so very much safer
than all the dysfunction awaiting outside.

I met my soulmate at twenty
and then left him behind
marrying one man,
and then another,
who never got me -
instead of the one and only man who truly did.

There's a reason that God protects children and Fools.
There's a purity of heart,
an innocence of spirit,
and . . . occasional lapses in intellect.

So, for all of the lessons I've learned and I've lost,
There are worse things than being a Fool.

Which I remind myself again
as I accidentally call my own cell phone
and then hang up my land line to answer the call.

In parting, I offer what I finally learned, which is

This above all:
To thine own Fool be true.

Cori MacNaughton
6Apr2005

This dusk
speaks of everything
I cannot express

fog dampens
the irritation
of a barking dog,
that's what I like
about fog

It’s not the big things—
not the promotion,
not the breakup,
not the years that pile on like
books you’ll never read.

It’s the small ones.

The way coffee tastes different
when you drink it alone.
The moment you realize the sound
of your own laugh feels foreign.

A dog barking two blocks down.
The scent of someone’s cologne in the wind,
and how it doesn’t belong to anyone you know.

Life collects itself in little drops,
small enough to ignore
until you’re drowning.

She sipped her drink,
eyes darting around the room,
like she was looking for something
she didn’t want to find.

I sat next to her,
close enough to hear her breathing,
close enough to feel the silence
where her words should’ve been.

When her hand brushed mine,
she didn’t pull away,
not right away,
but then she laughed too loudly,
like it never happened.

I let her have the lie.

Back to you,
I will come back to you
If you will come back to me.
And we can meet

In-between.

Somewhere in the middle
Of love with no regret,
And promise to forgive
And to forget.

You were written
In a language
No one understands.

You became a star
In the night sky.
While I?  I truly tried
To read your code

When you burst
Into a supernova
Overhead.