Dispersing Luck
April wind whips tumbleweeds
across the plains of Santa Fe.
Some wedge in barbed wire fences,
others bounce along I-25
like children playing hopscotch.
Maybe that is what happens
to the souls of the dead. They travel
unfettered, gather the detritus of life
as they journey from ocean
to mountain to desert.
What we call luck
might be what a soul grabs
from one person as it passes,
delivers to another on its way out of town,
the way tumbleweed disperses seeds
as it spins across the plains.
Since You Asked
You want to know why I don’t
watch the news. The anchor
lays out local stories the way
a casino dealer reveals
the house hand. Puppy attacked
by machete-wielding neighbor,
three children dead in house fire,
college lacrosse player murdered.
You want to know why I don’t
read the newspaper. Train derails
in India, more than 70 killed.
U.S. military dead in Afghanistan
hits 1,000. Robbers distract
victims at cash machines,
squirt them with feces
before stealing their money.
You want to know how I spend
my time. I listen to Simon and
Garfunkel in the car, read poetry
out loud in the evening,
line breaks punctuated
by the call and response
of songbirds in my back yard.
Nina Bennett is the author of Forgotten Tears A Grandmother’s Journey Through Grief. In 2006 she was selected to participate in a master writer’s retreat with the poet laureate of Delaware, sponsored by the Delaware Division of the Arts. Nina’s poetry has appeared in publications including Drash:Northwest Mosaic, Pulse, Alehouse, Panache, Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, The Smoking Poet, Oranges & Sardines, Philadelphia Stories, Pirene’s Fountain, The Broadkill Review, and the anthologies Mourning Sickness and Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS.
