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There are nights when my worries
choose a game—tonight it’s musical chairs–
To break  the monotony.
Rules are understood: Each time I toss,
turn, flip the pillow  in search of
cool peace, the worries tumble down
to the bottom of my brain. Unfastened
from their customary order,
they scrap and scramble for a sharp place to settle.
The twist they add, to keep the game
worth playing, is brilliant.
Whoever is left,
the worry without a seat,
wins that round.
Winner gets the place of honor,
the cozy chair at the top of my mind,
a chance to stretch out, make themselves comfortable.
Some night I brew them a mug of tea
while we chat, me and the winning worry,
the one who glows in the heat of all my attention
until the next round.

II
Down the street, the shop sign changes
From Closed till Spring
to a countdown.
Today is: Only 26 More Days Till Ice Cream.

III
We believe the pale strawberries at the grocer’s,
buying their whispered stories
of lazing all day in the sun
though we’ve been lied to before
and already know they taste like cool, damp cardboard.

IV
Besides all this, the obvious things:
Muddy green tractor hauling manure
to the field still edged in snow.
And then there’s the robin in my yard,
carrying his little sandwich board back and forth.

Bikes and skateboards appear,
blinking old eyes
dazzled in the bright sun,
hauled out of garages
by children in grimy parkas,
fake fur trim begging for a wash
and a summer-long nap.

Ready to let go of your clothes,
Dad wants me to empty your closets,
keeping what I want
before the rest goes to charity.
I slide hangers across
racks,thinking how you loved a bargain.
In the end, I decide to only take
what you’d never worn—a jacket, tags still attached,
and yes, you got it on sale.
Then, in a rush, I grab some black t shirts so old
they’ve begun the long slow fade to gray.
After all this time
they still hold your scent.

          Mari is flighty and giggles. Her voice is high-pitched and she talks too fast about absolutely nothing. Clothes. Shoes. Boys.
          But——the way she looks! Tall and pale, with wild dark curls and a pink, pouting mouth. She looks like you’d imagine Collette looked. That is, if you’d never seen a picture of Collette.
          So, we hired Mari. Her job is to sit at one of the tables near the sidewalk, with a small white cup of espresso and a leather sketchbook. Also, an ashtray, but we have to keep it filled ourselves, since Mari doesn’t smoke.
          We tell her to dress only in black. Tap pants. Skinny jeans. Little velvet flats. Or stilettos. Black cashmere turtlenecks, with a Hermes scarf and a Mont Blanc pen and her pink lips painted bright red.
          Her job is to look pensive. Intense. Artistic. Setting the tone for all the harried customers in suits, late for meetings on sales projections. Giving them some hope, a glimpse of another kind of life.
          She practices in the mirror every morning. Mari is a good girl, who takes her job seriously.

          I dreamed I opened a book with pages tipped in green.  Everything alive must die, it said. That’s a rule.  And there’s a limit to our physical size.  That’s a rule, too.  But there was an appendix, lists of classifications narrower than species. Smaller and smaller names for angels or atoms, dominions and principalities.  Here’s the very last page, where we’re all the way down to the little categories of shuffles and coincidences.

Here’s what I love about those stories:

 
The bumbling student asks a question— I picture him with a cap in his hands,eager and earnest, twisting it in nervous circles. The master answers him and the reply is often enigmatic and offered with no fanfare at all,in a querulous, impatient voice. Not what the shaken student expected of wisdom, to be delivered in irritation.

 
But then (and this is my favorite part) the student leaves, wanders forests, contemplates waterfalls and mountains and flowers, returns to his house or his shop, holding all he’s been told, until he discovers wisdom in himself by solving the puzzle set before him. Until he convinces himself that the master was tricky but wise.

 
I do it every day. Convince myself about this life, always pushed off kilter a few degrees, not quite what I expected or aimed at or planned on. I hear myself over and over say Ah, this is perfect for me, and in saying it, make it so.

When you say, Take it with a grain of salt,
a round little man walks into my mind
wearing chef’s whites and carrying a serving tray.
From a delicate green bowl,
he lifts one single grain of coarse salt
between his finger and thumb.
Pierre—yes, I’ve named him
by now—Pierre steps forward and bows
as he hands me one more grain
to add to the mountains of advice
I’ve already been given.