I wish I could explain it to you, but I can’t.
You’d have to walk around with me for a month
or so for it to make sense,
to seem like a real thing.
Sometimes, it’s not even real to me;
but it’s my life and
I’m the one walking around in it,
so there it is.

In the fall and winter,
particularly around the holidays,
it gets worse.  Some days,
especially during the last two weeks
before Christmas,
it gets really bad.

(Why do I think it’s a bad thing?)

(Is it?)

(What is this about?)


They come at me like zombies
when they see the crutches
and yet I refuse to blame my Cerebral Palsy
for what they do.  
Really, I believe that they’d show up anyway.
I think that they, and I to a degree,
feel some sort of cosmic pull
toward one another.

The drunks come to me.

(the developmentally disabled too.)

They tell me stories of how they ended up
in the same place that I am.
They tell me that they know also
that our paths were supposed to cross.
They tell me about their relationship with God
and how Jesus loves them in spite of their drunkenness
(or impairment.)
They tell me how blessed we are to have met.

That one always leaves me flummoxed.

All I wanted to do was eat a tenderloin and some fries.
All I wanted was a cup of coffee or a beer.
All I wanted was to occupy a small bit of
grey space for a couple of hours.

These cohabitates,
these space-stealers
always go straight for The Bible.

They talk of rapture
And the wholeness that I’ll
find in The Kingdom of Heaven
and I want to tell them that they’ve
taken some of that wholeness for
themselves, but I can’t.

I always say: “Thank you.”
And speak to them in
bumper-sticker platitudes;
telling them that we’re all
making our own ways
down our own paths.

And, it’s true, but I don’t want
to have to say it.
I don’t always want to believe it.

(And, I don’t always.)

I wish I could tell them that I want to be more like them,
to work in a factory,
lift the heavy stuff;
to work steadily on the line
or over the road,
inside the grey spaces
with more time to think,
to be quietly oaken
and iron.

*

-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications