Another Off-The-Cuff Poem

I’ll have to be careful, or I’ll end up making a habit of this lack of revision…

Chasing Joy

What if
Elusive joy slid
Like silk under my
Front door and out, across the dandelioned
Grass, down
The steps past the pumphouse, over the horse-tracked mud,
Where it stopped and bolted suddenly
Up a Doug fir trunk,
Wound itself around the tenth-highest branch, waited
For a God-gust —
Flapped like a flag?

With no time to collect my thoughts,
I’d have to scribble a plan, standing
Between the roots
While the horses searched my back pockets
For MacIntoshes.

How would I climb up, branch to branch,
Without so much as a pair of tree boots
Or leather gloves?

I’d have to become a raccoon,
Circling,
Peering down,
Washing my hands carefully.

Then I’d become a squirrel:
Pause to chitter of my ascent
Becoming narrower and narrower.

Then a song sparrow, small as an egg:
Flit the last three levels up and perch.

And all at once I would be me once more,
Bear that I am,
Cumbersome on such spindled height:
Begin a dangerous sway.

But just before I fell, I’d yank free
The unfurled silk, clutch the corners,
Raise my untried arms
And sail.

©2009 Katherine Grace Bond