Prose Poems
A Ballet for My Soul
There are those days that seem to lumber along like a careful slumber. When upon awakening, there seems no end to the need for lazy afternoon numbers. You know those little ditties from the fifties to the nineties?
I love it when my ear tingles, and my heart vibrates when hearing a tune from the remembered images of my youth. The days when I wiggled and shimmied while mopping my floors or cooking spaghetti—those little black musical notes are drumming on my brain.
Now I am wiser with age, and the word carefree is a sudden mystery. And even though my bones ache from my weary life, I still like to wiggle and shimmy my much wider hips to the music of my youth. My acquired wisdom of older bones has discovered the smooth ride of a different groove as I loosely relax in my cozy chair.
So now, I find my mind wanders along waves of Claire De Lune or Hana—a ballet as my soul floats around the room when I close my eyes and daydream.
To my surprise, I find that the afternoon light has absorbed into the night.
Game Changer
Do you ever find the time to play—you know what I mean, like a child? Do you remember ‘red light, green light’? Did you play ‘mother may I’? How about ‘kick the can’? Checkers, trouble, rummy, and go fish—those were the days. Playing outside till mom turned on the porch light and yelled for you to go inside was how we knew it was nearly time for bed.
Now, instead, we play beat the clock, or perhaps, the red light at the intersection. Green has nothing to do with a light. It now means money that we never have and kick the can, well, you know what that means now. Mother may I—suddenly means caring for her declining health, and trouble means nothing seems to be going right. Go fish—is just something you never find time to do, and turning on the porch light now means it’s dark because bedtime means insomnia.
Jill Yoder 