Ribbons

My wife and I spent the weekend in a city. It doesn’t matter which one. We’re from a small town, so every city to me feels pre-apocalyptic, like someone pulled the thread that started civilization’s unraveling.

That made me think of “Ribbons”, a poem which will be in my next book, A Song of Glass: Dreams, Stories, and Poems. “Ribbons” is a light-hearted, loose associated response to everything coming apart at the seams.

Ribbons

Let sunbeams fall like guillotines
and feathers slit the sky.
Let starlight rain like shards of glass
and breakers claw the shoreline.

If all the world turns to ribbons
I’ll tie one in your hair,
hang the rest as party streamers,
and have a cup of cheer.

There’s no time like the present, dear,
as long as it’s still wrapped.
But when the ribbon is untied,
the present then is past.