Trying to Keep Upright

It is slapstick comical,
this furious winter
slippy day.
Folks are looking back quick
to see if
someone else saw…
they are embarrassed,
as the single moment upright
teetered toward
a fall.

It doesn’t look good out there.

I’ll stay inside awhile,
where restless power is humming
and we’ve marmalade
on toast,
a little something warm
that isn’t blood.

“So lucky,”
they say and I am lucky, I guess,
my birthdate an obscure year,
that whispers of a
more remote but
similar mess.

It didn’t look good out there,
then,
either.

Parents, lovers and longtime friends,
are wiggling signposts,
proof of damaging wind.

When I have to go,
unwilling, must travel again,
I’ll slip and I’ll slide,
look backwards,
and grin.