The Reading Club

Every winter the library has a reading club:
Read books because we live in Michigan and it's winter;
Win prizes

I always imagine housewives and little old ladies
Sitting at home in their tacky Christmas sweaters
Curled up with some hot tea and scorning the outdoors
For romance novels and the company of their cats

And then there's me. I always look forward to joining.

Even though it's really not that exciting.
I rarely actually want the prizes;
I never win the drawings;
And I don't like the Bingo categories
Telling me to try some nonfiction or a local author

So God only knows why I dutifully fill out my contact information
And rearrange sticky notes trying to make the things I already want to read
Fit into the appropriate categories
Just so I can turn in a slip that, Scout's honor, I read 4 books this month
And pretend like I actually want another tote bag
Or a library-logoed ice scraper
And that I will actually have time to fill the entire card
In my already insanely busy life
For the satisfaction of a gift card to Applebee's


And yet, there's something about filling out that sheet
And turning it in
And knowing,
if nothing else,
I joined something.
I finished a few things.
I left another coffee stain
on another cherished page
of a thankfully borrowed book.

Cracked Earth

Annoyed by not knowing
Cranky and growing
In impatience and impulsivity

. . . live in the moment . . . but look
before you leap . . . do not worry . . .
be not hasty . . . good things come to those who

Hang onto the hard-tried proverb,
Searching for signs
Like the old woman
Searches for her youthful lover
In a wrinkled old face

Is this the face that, in age,
Is all the more the man she loves?
Or one more feeble façade,
With common flaws mistook for fate,
faith,
fidelity

Plumb the depths of intuition
Weigh the pros and cons
Till plumbs and weights
Have splashed the well to dry –
Cracked clay, baking in the sun.

A black umbrella in an ancient, papery hand
Shadows the fissures, like wrinkles, that web
The once supple, now sandy, sole
Blocking out a sun gone dark

A feeble step away and
The hard yellow earth exposed
To one pregnant, blue drop from above