I worry about the sighing

of my mother’s bones

 

each time we hug.

 

That a tornado-sky, that low-

humming, humid clutch of clouds,

 

will zero in on my heart one June night.

 

I worry that I won’t hide under the butcher-block

table nearly fast enough

 

to dodge the bullets, sooty rain,

golf-ball-sized hail, and pigeon shit

 

a life can happily fling our way.

I worry I’m just a story

 

tucked inside other stories,  

like the hatboxes

​

my grandmother stored in her dank,

Rhode Island basement.

 

A teetering stack

with department store names

 

like Bonwit Teller printed in black

dusty script across the round lids.

 

And let’s not forget the invisible:

the mosquito the size of a torn

 

eyelash, the grudge that lodges

in your chest for years, and the virus

 

mutating with the giddiness  

of a party guest who keeps  

 

pouring herself new cocktails

from the vodkas, gins, and tequilas

 

lined up at the bar

by some generous host.  I worry

 

I worry too much. .

I am not the problem-solver  

 

our world craves.  I am no beekeeper,

no geneticist mapping DNA. 

​

I’m a shy activist and a distracted

cook, inclined to burn boiling milk

 

and peas, to leave the tea kettle

shrieking.  Each thought

 

a firefly with its tipsy glow

careening inside my head

 

as if it could answer a question

I’ve not learned to ask yet. 

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