Blue skies for the first time in days. When it’s sunny, a small crystal makes rainbows in a corner of our home. Thank goodness for that.
In this blessed, irregular series “5 Poems I Saw,” I share with you five drops of life that felt like poems to me. If someone you love needs a poem today, please pass this along. <3
1. Wall calendars in the kitchen
Charmed by this homey decor, and more so by this person’s short and earnest thought piece on what makes an event calendar worthy. The practical can be so sweet.
2. Waiting in line at bakeries
It is tender to wake at the ethereal hour of 8 a.m. and run off to a bakery where you’ll wait in line for treats. Especially when the line is long and winds down the sidewalk, and especially when it’s cold and frosty and everyone is wearing sweatpants and long coats.
3. Friday afternoon nonstop flights to Vegas
An experience that is essentially a poem by Charles Bukowski. Cheap flight, long weekend, on edge, ready to party. No one is napping. I sat next to a kind woman whose skull-patterned hoodie smelled like dusty cigarette smoke and pink body spray. The scent was hard to handle, but every time the flight attendant came by the woman offered to buy me a drink, after ordering a Fanta for herself and a Coke for her friend. It was his 50th birthday that day, and they were going to Vegas. “We’re going to Vegas,” they said in hushed excitement, and repeated the chant to one another on the hour. When the wheels hit the ground she turned to her friend, like mother to son a the gates of Disney World, and whispered emphatically, “We’re in Vegas.”
4. Clothing swaps
A single pair of pants
fits every body differently
and that is beautiful.
5. This song, this dance
A melody from Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor Op. 28 No. 4, a sleepy apathetic dance, a recurring look of surprise, and lyrics describing herself as a missing person.