Poem for Monday and Mukilteo Sea Stars

Starfish
By Eleanor Lerman

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who say, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

-------- 

I've been up since before 6 a.m. Monday because we had to take the minivan to Toyota to find out why the engine service light was on -- turns out it was an O2 sensor that set it off, but the real problem is a leak in the coolant system that requires a part shipped from Oregon and a lot of money to fix. So after a couple of hours waiting in a nice service area with free coffee, cookies, and travel mugs, we took a Lyft back to the apartment at lunchtime and will take another one to retrieve the van hopefully tomorrow. 

It was otherwise a lovely day, not a cloud in the sky and not too warm. I took a walk after lunch to get the mail (I got presents from Kristen and Lyndita, plus an Our Flag Means Death shoulder bag I had ordered to find my people at festivals, yay) and saw frogs and turtles, then we took a walk to the beach in the afternoon to see the geese, ducks, and herons. Now we're watching Les Miserables -- the sexy Liam Neeson/Geoffrey Rush one with no singing -- in honor of the date. Sea stars from Mukilteo on Saturday: