Poetry — Blog — Tanya Shaffer

On the Occasion Of My Fifty-Seventh Birthday

After Annelyse Gelman, “How to Pray”

It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us – else what use is love at all?

- Oscar Wilde, “An Ideal Husband”

Bless the missteps, the stumbles, the chances lost

Bless the heaviness

The memory of those things brings

Bless friendship abandoned

Love unrequited or forsaken

Opportunity squandered

The gentle Spaniard

With eyes of softest brown

Whose hands you held and lips you kissed

On the Peace March

in Nicaragua, 1990

Then lost at a rally

And never found again

The Dutch friend met in Ghana

Who said if you didn’t write her back this time

She wouldn’t write you again

And why, oh why, did you not?

The number a friend gave you

In your solo performance days

For a major presenter

He was sure would be intrigued by your work

And the prestigious director

who handed you his card

Bless those times you sat by the phone

Those numbers in your hand

Dialed and hung up

And dialed

And hung up again

Somewhere in the Universe, All of This Is True

I was late because I overslept.

I was late because I was dissolving in tears.

I was late to protest the tyranny of time.

I was late because I was sucked into a Black Hole. Fortunately it didn’t like the taste of my deodorant, so it spit me back out.

I was late because I was smelling every flower and petting every dog

I was late because I fell asleep on the couch by the fire, covered in a mauve wool blanket, one dog snuggled against me and two more on the rug beside me, and when the alarm went off—I’d set it because I had to meet you—I thought I hit snooze, but I accidentally hit stop. That’s why I’m still asleep, and what you see here is not me but a holographic projection. The real me is still asleep on the couch by the fire and will sleep there for a hundred years, until awakened by True Love’s Kiss.

I was late because I was deciding whether to jump from a bridge into the choppy silver waves and let the fish feast on my flesh.

I was late because I was frolicking in the autumn leaves.

I was late because I’m genetically coded for lateness.

I was late because of the rain.

Because of the traffic.

Because of the traffic caused by the rain.

Because a woman with a walker was crossing the street in slow motion, and I had to wait for her to pass.

Because I was standing at the tippy-top of the world, wondering what would happen if there were no gravity and I were lifted off into space to float around the universe. Would I find another planet with life on it? Would they accept me? Love me? Would I finally feel at home?