Poets help us love the bump on our nose
Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own. -Salvatore Quasimodo
Someone who reads 37days wrote last week to ask about my perfect life. How did it become so perfect?
Mr Brilliant rushed into the room to see if I was okay. I was laughing so hard that I choked on my own spit.
My life is perfect only in its embrace and absolute celebration of imperfection. I can’t find my keys or my car, I have days and even whole weeks and months of sheer insignificance like you do, my holiday cards for the past two years sit unmailed (don’t they Mama?), I’ve been paying for TiVo for too long to tell you and I still can’t figure out how to hook it up, and I’m down to one pair of matching socks, one of which has gone missing. And, oh, so very much more that I cannot say out loud.
And so, when Chris Meissner and her tiny but strong friend Piaf sent this poem to me this morning, I recognized my way through it immediately. Here’s to blessed imperfection!
Imperfection
I am falling in love
with my imperfections
The way I never get the sink really clean,
forget to check my oil,
lose my car in parking lots,
miss appointments I have written down,
am just a little late.
I am learning to love
the small bumps on my face
the big bump of my nose,
my hairless scalp,
chipped nail polish,
toes that overlap.
Learning to love
the open-ended mystery
of not knowing why
I am learning to fail
to make lists,
use my time wisely,
read the books I should.
Instead I practice inconsistency,
irrationality, forgetfulness.
Probably I should
hang my clothes neatly in the closet
all the shirts together, then the pants,
send Christmas cards, or better yet
a letter telling of
my perfect family
But I’d rather waste time
listening to the rain,
or lying underneath my cat
learning to purr.
–by Elizabeth Carlson
[image from aphotojourney]
