Linda Back McKay: "On the Meaning of"

This is what life does.
It wakes you in the morning
before the morning
glories open and gives you
the sound of your mother’s voice.
Life spreads itself across
the ceiling to make you think
you are penned in, but that
is just another gift. Life takes
what you thought you couldn’t live
without and gives you a heron instead.
And a dragonfly, stitching its way
through the milkweed. Life contains all
of your tears in a vessel
shaped like hands in prayer.
Life is shape, sight, sound, bone.
It whispers and sings and holds
you and you almost never feel it.
You push your way from phase to phase.
You are a horse with blinders.
You think you are pulling, but you
are being driven.
While going about your solitary life,
one hoof in front of the other,
real life is turning the stars,
like mirrors, in your direction.



"On the Meaning of," by Linda Back McKay, from The Next Best Thing: Poems. © Nodin Press, 2011.

Image credit: "Horse with Blinders," charcoal on paper, by Tony Lawton (originally black and white).