It happens to me at the bank
or on hold with the phone company.
It’s as if my belly is suddenly a magnet
for a backlog of discontent,
a traffic jam of angry thoughts,
a mosh pit of irritation.
Later,
when I am kind again,
I always wonder,
as if thinking about a girl
who is not me:
is the storm still there
brooding underneath my skin,
waiting for a customer service agent to tell me
I needed to fill out a different form
and how does my heart feel
sitting so close
to the fuse?
So when my site crashed today,
poems deleting like a ghost
dancing on my keyboard,
I tried hard
like those lumberjacks who run on logs in the river,
trying to balance,
trying to remember
I can choose
to dam the rush of rancor.
I can even laugh,
kiss my son,
sing Men at Work hits with my husband.
My mother has saved every poem after all,
and smart people are doing their best
and when I looked calmly at the trees outside
bending toward each other
as if sharing secrets,
my problem seemed comfortingly straightforward
and the trees wonderfully big.