~
Anodyne
Bring all your beloved moments and people together
in the same space and time, so they exist simultaneously.
Your childhood best friend sells lemonade
with you by the church corner while your young father
dances with your two-year-old self to Billy Joel.
Your pre-teen brothers, Greek gods, are the stars
of the beach baseball game. Concurrently, you sit
in a lilac garden, contemplating all you cannot explain,
like moments beyond time, and the sky above you
is also the ocean. Your mother dresses you in lavender tulle
and takes you to see your first ballet, where you watch yourself
dance professionally, ecstatically on stage.
Meanwhile your beloved cooks fresh pasta,
kissing you with a mouth of basil and thyme,
and you quietly nurse your two babies
as the December moon saturates your bedroom.
Worlds collide, and it is heavenly, but it is real
and sustainable, even as the future rolls out before you
like a wave. You weep. You gradually grow accustomed
to joy overtaking you. You forgive time
and illness and everything else that deprived you
from having these moments forever. You relax
and become whole, like the sky and ocean meeting.
Fear drains from your stomach, your brain, your heart,
your throat. You sing. You become all of yourselves.
~
Francine Rubin
Francine Rubin is the author of the poetry chapbooks If You’re Talking to Me: Commuter Poems (dancing girl press), City Songs (Blue Lyra Press), and Geometries (Finishing Line Press). She is online at francinerubin.tumblr.com.