The God of Small Things Went AWOL
Why do we manage disasters yet collapse at the slightest word?
I always get the bayleaf, the knot
of unsolved garlic on my plate.
You say it doesn’t matter but we
fight until dawn, incrementally.
We’re just an ordinary couple —
it’s the small things that offend —
disasters we ride out like two saints
in the vacuum of our roomy house.
The therapist says when I use words
like always or never I regress
to Infant Time, like a desperate child
crying in his cot, elastic & afraid.
I’m about the right age for a birth guru
to administer distress to a tired nation
I’llbelieveanythingifonlyIcangetsomesleep
a disastrous enterprise for the small &
unprepared. Pour a pint into a thimble
& expect it to spill & now couples the
world over disintegrate on the small things.
Where is that god she wrote about?
We need him, WE NEED HIM NOW!
WE NEEDED HIM BACK THEN.
Copyright Simon Heathcote
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