Wednesday, May 28, 2014

What do you have for lunch the day your hero dies?


What do you have for lunch
the day your hero dies?
May 28, 2014


You settle on a hard boiled egg.
Smack the brown shell against the counter top.
Crunch its sharp bits beneath your finger tips.

Yes, Maya must have one day
eaten a hard boiled egg.
She must have felt the smooth curve
of the white in her hand.
She must have spread it open
the white, then two halves of the inside sun
and eaten them with salt.

But today it is you
eating the egg,
you taking each bite slow
you becoming the woman you will be
without Maya.


Thinking this
you look across the mountain
of breakfast dishes
still in the sink.
At noon, a heap of tiny
failures.


What will you do now
that she is gone?


First things first.
You will get the dishes done.
You wipe every bit of
crumb and scum out.
You stack the load neatly
and start the cycle.


Then you look out the window
to the green trees
illuminated
And beg pray promise her, 
Maya, that you will try
in your however small way
to continue her work


to say the thing that cannot be said
and get up the next morning
to rise.

***

And Still I Rise, by Maya Angelou

1 comment:

  1. Lovely. On the floor next to me is my own heap of tiny failures. Unfolded laundry that was swept off my bed so that I could end this day with rest. Perhaps tomorrow, when I rise...

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