Commas

Commas. Talk about imperfection. Despite numerous attempts to study this illusive symbol, my use of commas has not been mastered. There is for me a correlation between being nobody special and being imperfect, making mistakes like writing things with too few or too many commas. Those last words recall a poem, MIDLIFE, that I wrote many many years ago. I shall post it here. It was freeing to write it, to find amusement in that which I at times could take so seriously.


MIDLIFE

I am learning how to love myself, my knuckles,
the veins behind my knees, the way I clear
my throat too often and am impatient with my children
especially the youngest who was not expected to live—
cut downs in his wrists and ankles, plastic tubes through
his nostrils—the stigmata still there, the dots and dashes
like secret zippers in his flesh.

I am learning to love my unpredictable digestion, the pain
I cannot reach inside my knees, the grossly uneven balance
of good intentions to deeds carried out.
I am loving the hardening of my thighs when I stride
on the too busy street I live on, inhaling the silence
between cars that rush by as if they were on fire.
I am teaching judgment to bend his stiff knees.

I apologize less for being alive, for leaving food crusted
on the forks I’ve washed, for too many or too few
commas when I write, for parents who speak with accents
thick as soup and beliefs they didn’t mean to use like whips.
I watch my gratitude swell like the moon. I keep company
with respect, accept—even see the charm—in my outdated
wardrobe, the seduction of time, that rascal death.