Get up. Your tears are
stuck to your hair
like oil on feathers, and there's a strand
in both your eyes. Get up. How dare
you doubt what you don't understand
and never will. And why do you
insist on waiting for a hand
to intervene when you've had two
since you were born? You can't dispute
the world or wonder what to do
when no one's asking that from fruit,
or mud, or fleas, or whales, or wind.
The trees don't question their pursuit,
so why should you? Get up. Don't spend
your unassuming history
preparing for your quiet end.
Go be, "Red works on you." Go be
some picked-up trash. Get up. Go be
another person's Canon in D.
Originally from South Carolina, Gretchen Hodgin
now lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has appeared in or is
forthcoming in Gargoyle, The Lyric, Sewanee Theological Review, Magma
Poetry, and The Country Dog Review, among others. She is a
poetry reviewer for JMWW magazine.
