The Thread
A poem from the archives, meaning from the book I published in 2021, which is also titled In Praise of Thought.
I’m hanging on by a thread!
she told me.
I searched for the thread,
she searched for a pear.
We were at the grocery store
and she was standing upright.
It got me thinking.
Life is both fragile and persistent:
one for one, one for another.
A forty-foot drop and the contents of his head
are splayed out on the pavement;
he breathes yet.
A slight twist of the spine and her head fills of
more than it can handle and no release;
she breathes not.
It's precarious.
We often survive something we shouldn't
just to die of a fluke.
One could say it's funny,
but it's certainly
no joke.
It's an invisible measure —
some century-old dame
falls down the stairs and
shatters a brittle femur.
She has yet more years to ponder.
A cautious son is hit head-on by
a bad decision.
And that's that.
We are all dangling by a thread,
connected to what feels like whim.
Or for some of faith,
the thread is sewn on by design.
Is this thread titanium?
Or more like a strand
of human hair —
suprisingly resilient yet easily
snapped by two fingers,
quickly singed into debris
by sporadic flame?
Some thread refuses to break no
matter the peril.
Others are born already fractured,
as if the faintest of breaths could
blow them to pieces.
Who weaves each thread
to each body? And how
come so bare?
I'd prefer a blanket I could wrap
around and in.
Something heavy, weighted,
warm.
What kind of existence is this?
Always hanging on to dear life!
What faith could I clumsily grasp,
if only to relinquish control to
a line so delicate?
Oh well,
it's no matter.
The thread dangles,
we hold tight.
Or not.
It's what gives life
its punch.