No Free Ride
I carried luggage and left the warm hearth
to go out in to the wilderness
with indentured intentions
and a heavy heart. I was willing to wait for my own,
even give away all for the chance that one might rebound
and land upon me like a piece of shroud
flung by some kind wind.
I fed the poor, gave hope to the hopeless,
drug the wounded from their battlefield,
and clothed them in the gifts I had brought.
And there was such need, and they filled
my cases with stones so full of sorrow
I could hardly heave them along with me.
I took their burdens, bought a wagon, a ton truck,
a moving van with rev’d up motor
to cart their cares that were more than they could carry.
I unwound them from their weariness,
slept in the snow banks, skin to skin,
to keep them from freezing to death.
I emptied all my righteous reserves
until I was gnawing on nothing but bones
and the leather strapping on the suitcases.
I almost missed my flight because I forgot
to watch the sky for an airplane landing
on the muddied airstrip.
When all was empty, grief came to visit; once,
twice, three times a heavier stone
attached like appendages because my cartage
has been given away, right to the last clasp.
I stood naked, grief pelting me, cold
inhabiting my bones while warmth
passed me by. I was lost in the forest.
Feelings escaped from every breath I released.
I held out my thumb and became a hitchhiker
with high hopes that someone would rescue me.
I carried the weight of many communities
on my shoulders, in jute bags; had swallowed
their problems whole until they weighted my gut,
ate at my belly, drooped from every nerve that was left.
He had not come, sinking in sand,
making me feel any less forsaken
or burdenless. My cases were gone
and he had no place to put even one gift
that might save me from my philanthropic
pleasure of doing for others instead of myself.
No free ride came and I was forced to bend
to the clay and fashion a totem, an idol,
a new god to hand me a new map
so I could find my way out of my man-made hell.
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