I thought I’d start off this blog’o mine with something new, rather than something old. In a return to my #coasterpoetry project, I give you Change:

Change I

Change comes along
galumphing loudly
rattling as it goes
Coughs up a hairball of
smoke
to cloud your already
fragile senses.

Sits there
on the banister
patient as a housecat
waiting for you to fall
or sing and dance
or scream

Change rattles in your pockets
following you home
as if it were
something less ominous
less frightening
less new

Looks better on the horizon
but up close
a grey mountain of uncertainty
looming
and what if you can’t climb?

Change II

arrives in a swirl of feathers
crimson
amethyst
indigo
a clam shell thrust to the shore
by a wayward tide
Makes you wonder about
Aphrodite
ever-moving
tossed on an azure sea –
seasick?
Or jubilant at what’s to come?

After the dust settles,
the fog clears,
the waves subside,
there may be clarity
in knowing that
nothing is for nothing
and never still
never still

I’ve often said I hate change. Usually, when change comes poking around, nudging you from your comfort zone, it seems like a terrible thing. I’m torn between the optimistic side of my heart, and the (jaded?) realistic nature of my head. I’m sure you can commiserate. Recently, my job was reorganized. A rather lack-luster term for something that has the power to shake up hundreds, if not more, people. I wrote Change a week after we received the news, when things were still in the ‘unknown’ phase and no one knew how things would end up. I knew from the beginning that I would make out alright – my current position remained almost exactly the same. But still, it’s more than a bit unnerving to have your career tossed about like you’re riding a tilt-a-whirl.
I wrote Change II immediately after writing Change I because, after I finished the first coaster, I realized how bleak it was. Was this really what I thought of change? Couldn’t I at least try to see the other side of the coin? And so I think of this as one poem, not two because you need both halves to make the whole.