Lost

In the light of the Target bathroom I am startled and gray and really old, as if all proof of life was lost in aisle 6. Somehow I pushed a cart right past my purpose, and in this fluorescence I am undone and un-intentional. In this god-awful mirror I can clearly see that I left myself behind this morning, perhaps sleeping in a patch of sun at the foot of the bed.

I need to leave and start the day over. I need to go where I will recognize myself.

I need to find an October field, a garden, an island. I look my best in bonfire light, (though the occasional firefly is also flattering). I need the black of the darkest night so my teeth will shine like stars. I need a sea-salty wind so my hair can remember its wave. I need a beach and a blizzard for my skin to glow; a bouquet of peonies to make me blush; a heat wave to pink me up.

I come to life where I learned it best. I am shaped by the earth of my 56 years; my legs first danced in the African dust, my hips first curved around a California coast, and my voice still carries a little banjo from the Shenandoah Valley. I first knew silence in the tall Maine pines; I first prayed there, too. I learned to mourn at the base of a tree, to love in a field of lupine, to persevere in a blueberry patch.

Yes, I know I learned to drive in the glare of a 6-lane highway, to spin in the halls of DC, to profit in corporate boardrooms. I know how to bend myself until I break; I sold my first lie in a fourth grade classroom and slipped my first broken law into the pocket of a Woolworth coat.

But I am made of the world and belong best within it; out in the wild without aisle or cart. So put me on a boat, send me out to sea, set me adrift if that’s what it takes. Whenever I am lost, whenever I am old and gray, put me out to pasture so I will know myself again.