This past weekend found me at the copy store, printing out flyers for my dear teacher. I drove to grocery stores and coffee shops, restaurants and health food stores to hang the posters on community bulletin boards.
My car functions like my locker did in high school. It carries the days' errands - the boots that need resoled and taken to the shoemaker's, the soccer cleats and shin guards from last weekend's soccer tournament, the teachers' gifts for the end of the school year.
This week, the posters joined this jumble of treasures. With them, a poem came. I might never look at the 'mess' in my car in the same way again. I hope so.
Hanging posters
The flyers, they live in your car. They nestle
in the backset with the Goodwill donations
and the sun shade that blocks the broiling
June heat, the umbrella that sheltered
last night’s rain.
They live amidst your son’s soccer cleats
and water jug, the air ripe with unwashed
socks. For a while, this is their home.
They are comfortable here.
As you take each flyer from their cardboard sleeve
and tack them to the bulletin board, they leave
their jumbled nest to create a new cacophony:
babysitting help, a Shakespeare musical
instructions to help someone who’s choking.
You add this new note to the symphony
and notice how it hums in tune. Each
paper and thumbtack sings:
the glory, oh the glory, of being alive.