"Ego" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

Ego (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)



Don't go. Refresh yourself.
Be a river through the mesquite
forest, a single tree of wind.

Don't stop. Rehearse your
becoming on a stage of dead leaves.
Take the shell. Speak the entire emptiness.

Don't fall. Sleep in time's shadow.
Be a whale, bask above the tidal
wave. Be frothy and wild. Fly up.

Don't let go. Hold fast
to anger for an instant, love
for as many miles as she takes you.

Don't live alone. Embrace
the wee lives between the boards,
the many mice in the mind's larder.

Don't laugh alone. Tell!
Tell apart the loaves of bread
from the fishes. Be vicious to your sadness.

Don't remind yourself of others,
of lazy ashes in your days, of the way
we live: pomegranates, a single rubied seed.





Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/1/11