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Baggage, a poem by Saudia Sharkey

What were you doing
when your mind went south
And took all the baggage of your life with it?
 
Were you among friends
Who cared and worried
When your responses to them,
Began to blatantly drop all pretense to rationality?
 
Perhaps you were sitting before a glass or mirror,
Sole witness to the extraordinary event,
That, had you still held the power of description
Within the warm slackness of your lips,
You might have described
As the ascension of a soul
That resembled yours perfectly,
In every way
 
And that,
(You might have added),
The higher it rose from your body,
The less personal became your attachment to it.
 
Or, you might have been standing on the street
Anonymous flotsam among total strangers
Who never noticed the difference
And so,
Cared about it
Even less than you did.
 
For what it's worth now,
I can tell you it doesn't matter.
 
For what it's worth now,
I can give you a piece of useless advice.
 
We are all of us trying to break our way through
To the surface of something.
Some of us scratch and some of us claw
And some of us see the futility in both.
 
We are all of us walking on a web's-breadth
Of solid ground.
Some of us tiptoe, parasols aloft, and some lurch and wobble
But the most sensible leap off the edge,
And send their baggage in another direction.
 
Saudia Sharkey is a resident of Ashland, Oregon, where she is married and a mother of two sets of teenaged twins She is a graduate of Southern Oregon University, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting. Saudia also writes poetry, fiction and indignant letters when she can arrange her schedule accordingly. The practical side of her personality works as a chef and caterer.

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