Nina Alvarez: "If You Could Be Soft"

If you could be soft in what you are. In what you’ve felt in the world.

If you could release, just for a moment, how he held you, or how the kids should have come home.

If you just put down the can of paint. Listen.

All along you’ve been waiting. A couple long sighs, a piece of the way things wave and you’re off.

Have you considered much what it is to sit on the lawn. What is under your fingers, what is under your hands. And how to live an agreeable life, and how much it takes in a night to get through what you must first get through in order to just sit here and be happy.

"If You Could Be Soft" by Nina Alvarez. Published online at the poet's website, July 7, 2010. © Nina Alvarez.  

Art credit: Untitled photograph by Allison Carmody (originally color).