Give up

In Praise of Giving Up

Let's say you're riding your bike in the rain
Hunched over, squinting, tense and you feel
hair unravel, crisp lines smudge away
and then: Sploosh!
- a car's muddy wake
smacks you broadside, and thus
you might as well be swimming - so
you wriggle your toes and zoom
through this strange new ocean
with other strange fish, soaked bemused,
but beginning to straighten
Who grin at you in this fellowship of surrender to the rain.

Or the beluggaged airport careen
cutting corners with your objects, cracking elbows -
checking the clock as you click grimly on,
feet screaming, hand rubbing raw on the carryon bag,
mind gnawing on your relentless quest's
bumbling timetable math - and then the strap breaks.
All your possessions puddle around your feet
and you give up.
The clock clicks on thrice as quick but you just breathe
and find slowly a place to sit
to watch your plane lift itself,
suddenly nearer to heaven without you
than bird ever was known to fly -

You just slowly sit, bags drop, muscles flat
And when you reach at last to poke a pot plant
(you're sure it's plastic)
the waxy leaf throbs
in your hand, and weeps
a single tear of milky sap
hovering fat on the leaf's juicy tip
Ready to fall and it falls

Or when I look at your close face and know
we'll never hold each other in the storm
and in that truth a glorious letting go -
unslipping veils of hope one by one
standing naked in the sun.