By Joseph Mills
Having inched up the ladder’s rungs,
holding the looped decorations like rope,
you remember your brother’s comment,
No one should get on a roof after fifty,
and the fact you promised your partner
you wouldn’t clean out the gutters
when no one was home. Technically
this is different, and you are doing it
for her since she loves Christmas lights.
But, even though you’re not on the roof,
just a ladder, high (very high) in the air,
it’s not the climbing, but the reaching
to twist the cord around a nail or eyelet,
it’s the leaning, that puts you at risk,
because, to be honest, in years past,
it hasn’t felt like leaning, just a motion
that needed to be done. You balanced
without thinking about balancing; now,
you’re aware of it, and being aware
makes it awkward and dangerous. Is this
the least realistic part of the Santa myth?
An old guy being so sure-footed on shingles?
You want to believe, not in him, but
in yourself, that you can move around,
irrespective of gravity, and yet you know
one misstep, one inch cantilevered too far,
will forever change the holiday season.
You realize now, although the cards
and specials never show it, riding shotgun
with the fat man in red is the gaunt one
with the scythe. You don’t look down, afraid
to see bony fingers on the ladder’s rungs.
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A faculty member at the University of North Carolina, Joseph Mills has published Bleachers: 54 linked fictions and several collections of poetry with Press 53, most recently Bodies in Motion: Poems About Dance. www.josephrobertmills.com