Because we all want to write more poems.
Contingency Plans
“I’m a mountain goat!”
she says, scampering
on all fours over
the boulder at the
edge of the sea
she is a poem
unto herself
this running
leaping
climbing
seven year old
girl child
now perched
fifteen feet
above the
tide pools
on a rock slick
with sea foam
and jagged with
muscle shells
over which I see
a branching flowchart
of worst case scenarios
- deep cuts
on bare skin, or
- broken bones
from the rocks, or
- drowned, sucked
under by
the current, or
- dead, her
skull smashed
next
I map contingencies
if I jump
into the water how
do I get us both
out
if she is bleeding, what
can be a bandage
(my shirt)
or a tourniquet
(my windbreaker)
where is my phone
(the backpack)
(even with both of her
parents right there,
I run this exercise)
all in
silence, all
in an instant
all loaded
onto a scale
whose
counterweight
is her
confidence
and ability to
manage
risk
perhaps
I will move a hair closer
or offer an arm
or tell her to come down
perhaps I will
do nothing
it is always thus
with this child
and her brother
these lovers of
rocks, trees,
precipes, and
all other places
of great height
and poor footing
I watch
and
stew
and
drive
myself a
little mad
love makes us so
fucking vulnerable
- Michael Mayhew's Shared Poems
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