Guest Authors
Erica Lehrer - Poet - Author
Dancing With Ataxia
1554.8
By Erica Lehrer
for David Prather
If you didn’t live one thousand five
hundred
fifty-four point eight miles away, I would
bake a bread
of the richest most delicious pumpernickel, sweetened
with honey, in the breadmaker
I considered buying –
but didn’t, having realized, as I stood
conversing
with the aproned salesman with thinning
hair,
that I didn’t have anyone to bake for, at
least
no one within driving distance – although, certainly,
the distance between us is drivable if I
spent
several days behind the wheel of a car,
crossing
Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and most of
California.
Sometime after sunrise, I’d leave the
bread – so fragrant! –
on your doorstep, wrapped in a blue cloth napkin
in a wicker basket filled with jams and a carafe
of chilled juice squeezed from oranges plucked
from a tree in my backyard – if I had an
orange tree.
Then, enjoying the morning birdsong,
I’d linger
on your top step. Still dawdling, I’d look up, marveling
that the trees lining your street form a
green canopy,
their outstretched branches touching
overhead; and that,
or those trees, planted as saplings a century ago,
the distance they’ve traveled through time
and space to reach
each other exceeds the one thousand five
hundred
fifty-four point eight miles I would travel,
across
state lines, mountains, ravines and deserts,
to your door.
Copyright
2011 Erica Lehrer, All rights reserved.