Ladybug

Crawling down plastic drapes,

Longing for that stark white sky locked behind the imponderable mystery of "glass", My pumpkin-colored ladybug companion in these four walls of corporate-rate stucco and polyester Explores her options

While I explore mine.

Across a laptop-laden desk, strewn with papers and stuffed scraps of I-can't-forget-that, or just-in-case; Jigsaw pieces of a life Longing for that stark clarity of purpose locked behind a morning as mundane as these plastic drapes.

How different, then, are we?

But I can Reach for the latch in a small act of kindness or petty deus ex machina indulgence And usher her out, into the wet cool morning

She can not understand what has brought her salvation or even, perhaps, that she is now free But she must know that something has changed

And I at the window, standing to watch her tumble from our glassy perch,

flutter, swerve, spiral, to the manicured not-quite-woods below

I also feel the change

My breath takes in morning-filled air as if for the first time, Giving back evanescent wisps, carried, by the leaf-rustling breeze into that sky she still seeks

And I wonder: am I now free?

[19 Nov 2008 - Yet another nature-meets-civilization poem; hmmm, I may be on a theme! From the desk of the La Quinta Inn I was staying at in Kirkland, WA, during my business trip up there last week. Boy, do I love the northwest!]