APAD or 30/30 Day Two

 

Midway, Canadian National Exhibition:

Stroller pushers

and sticky handed candy floss flossers.

Ring toss tossers,
Swing the hammer swingers

Show-off muscle builders,

and "Try again to win the giant panda for your pretty gal" geezers.

The spin-around ride riders and

the roller coaster fanatic-ers:

The first time and next time and "never again"ers.

The "Guess your weight" guessers and the "Don't you dare" darers,

The bump into-ers and the "Watch it!" accusers.

The tummy aching throwing-up-ers
Cry-baby mommy worriers

The "going home now" goers,

The let go of balloon losers.
AND

One big, red balloon
as it gracefully

floats away.

APAD, day three?

While Riding the Bus

I READ A POEM
where an advertisement should have been.
 I got very excited and
 I looked around
 nobody else seemed to notice.
They were hanging on to poles,
looking at their phones,
or
if they could see through the mash up of bodies and bags
looking out the windows.

 The words were what I would have said,
 maybe they were mine
for it seemed they fit right in my brain
like eggs in a nest
like a hand in a hand.
 I had no pen so
 I sent myself a text.
It read:

dionne brand--i have been losing roads to light on

 

 

APAD, day four

Cast Iron Pots

My brother's wife was taking his cast iron pots to the donation bin.
Everyone in my family was taught that you had to have cast iron pots and 
you had to keep them forever
god forbid, some disaster ended you
and they were lost until a bunch of
archeologists could dig them up.
But even still they'd be good, 
just needing bit of scrubbing and seasoning.

No one outside our family
can understand this
need to hang on
to something so
impossibly
heavy.
or why we tell a history hidden behind a patina of alteration.

one pilgramige or another
possessions of the fallen passed down the line,
 iron pots clanging.

So we conspire.
I tell him I will go to Value Village
and buy them all back

—give them to her for Christmas—

adding another chapter in the mythology of  our family's resilience, and iron.