Good News
There are times when the worst
thing you could imagine
doesn’t happen. The eggs left boiling in the pot
until they’re smoking fireballs,
and the pot itself a blackened shell,
doesn’t burn the house down.
You get there in time to open the windows,
run cold water, laugh
at yourself and shake your head.
Your family, it turns out,
has loved you all along, more than you knew,
despite your baffling inability
to get with any sort of program.
It is possible to learn to embrace your fate,
as Joseph Campbell says,
though he doesn’t tell you how.
Sometimes you stumble but don’t fall.
The bees are making a quiet comeback,
sweet-talking the bougainvillea blossoms,
and the hummingbird has built her thimble nest
on an impossibly skinny twig of the peach tree,
so small your husband has to point at it
for five full minutes: There! There! while you peer
out the smudged windshield of your glasses until
the branch moves and you see her,
ensconced on her tiny throne,
breasting the breeze like a figurehead.
*
Alison Luterman has published four previous collections of poetry, most recently In the Time of Great Fires (Catamaran Press,) and Desire Zoo (Tia Chucha Press.) Her poems have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Sun, Rattle, and elsewhere. She writes and teaches in Oakland, California. www.alisonluterman.net