Sometimes you just keep going

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Have you ever been thrown so far off path

you can’t see what is back over your shoulder in history?

 

has a story ever crawled out from your past

ripping you back into its dirt-devil events?

 

I have held myself on life’s balance beam

with muscles built of blunders and faux pas

 

I maybe didn't gain showmanship, although I've

stayed upright, inching forward,

 

until every once in a blue mood, it happens

a wind of memory reaches out, pushes

 

hard, I feel myself first wobble, then

swing my arms frantically to stay upright

 

while exhaling in the direction of forgetting

but I lose my rhythm and hyper react

 

finding my intentions and resolves

cluttered in chaos, and me splat in their midst

 

and, there’s nothing to do but clean up, sort out,

climb back on the arc of fate until balance flips me off again.

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Sharon Mooney, “Sometimes you just keep going, from Roundtable Literary Journal, annual issue, ed. Caitlin Chester & Elizabeth Burton, May 2022, Hopkinsville, KY

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