Beate Sigriddaughter

On the tightrope
of your condescension
I find myself
astonishingly nimble.

Just in case
bury me in a dancing dress.

editors note: Love this – agnostic optimism. (Read another optimistic missive on Beate’s page – check it out.) – mh clay

You didn’t wait for me
at the unfamiliar
fork in the road.

I was only lost a little
while, then found my way
home anyway.

That’s all I have to say.

Early
times of wild
anticipation, each
waking an event,

eyes open to surprises,
sunrise, sudden
excellence
of toes or hair
or even green skies
bold in paintings,
the quivering
wait after lunch
of bread soup,
for finally night
so old-fashioned
candles on the tree
could be lit. Christmas
Eve magic, days
she was not jealous
yet of things
she didn’t even want
she was still
good enough for life.

Long before she knew
how to dance
she knew it was coming.

She longs to wake again
to wander in snow,
reunited with her breathless
elfin adoration.

I kneel in gravel, no tears, just
fascinated with six tiny purple petals
poking through light snow. I don’t know
their name. I have arrived
here limping through decades of searing
masculine entitlement and much
benevolent contempt. Six tiny petals
like sunbeams, like foxes, like stars,
reminding me—I need no respect, no
love to exist. My splendid body,
like a purple flower, does its miraculous
thing, even as my soul limps on
in disbelief, knowing how
lovely it would have been to dance.

It will — you did look, didn’t you? —
remind you of your dreams. It will
remind you the world owes you nothing
and you owe nothing in return. Life is
a gift, not a duty; it glides like a river
that doesn’t carve canyons for love. No
deference, no duty, no obedience.
It will remind you of your skin and how
it shelters dreams and bones. How beautiful
you are, exuberant when someone
unexpected crosses your path, a lizard,
a hawk, a lover, and you know even God
isn’t God in order to be loved. You can
breathe now. There are waterfalls
you yearn for you will likely never see,
and dances you will likely never dance
again, though they were dazzling and
perhaps still are in someone else’s bones.
But if you get up early in late summer
you may already find winter’s beloved
Orion in the eastern sky. You are enough
to make things happen.

How come
I’m tempted to run
out and buy meat to deliver
to a hungry fox,
yet I don’t want to give
spare change to a man
asking for it
by the Lutheran church?

I live
therefore
I am

good enough.