The Thing About Life by Elizabeth Raby

July 25th, 2012 at 3:12PM

The Thing About Life by Elizabeth Raby

It’s a strange thing about life—
how we want it, no matter what—
the cane, the hearing aid,
the oxygen pulled along behind us
like a grocery cart, which, of course,
it sort of is, feeding us our necessaries.
For the fortunate, the brain continues to function
at more or less its accustomed pace—
a little clog, a blockage here and there,
but we manage to work around them,
process and produce. Through
my thicker lenses, around my
growing cataracts, I still am able to see
the hummingbird, iridescent green speck
riding purple-leaved branch of the plum tree
in early morning breeze. Behind them
once again the sun clears the mountain.