Holy Smoke

I feel a strong connection to this picture.  I feel like it really captures who I am, as if it were a photograph of my soul, if that were possible.  I always get lost in thought when I'm at the kitchen sink and I think this picture shows me lost in thought or being startled or interrupted out of that deep interior place.  At the time it was taken, my nine year old son and I were doing some renovations in the kitchen.  We'd taken down and thrown away the rusty old metal wall and floor cabinets.  We built new base cabinets and a counter-top from pine planks that we got by tearing apart pallets my husband brought home from work to burn in the wood stove. We didn't have any fancy tools, just a hammer and a jig saw.  It was exhilarating to create something out of nothing.  

Holy Smoke

Last night at eleven

in my torture chamber bed

as I was drifting off to sleep

I was startled awake instead.

“What the heck was that?” I asked

You sat up and said 

“I threw an alarm clock bomb out the window.”*

I screamed, "It just missed my head!”

“But I saved our lives,” you insisted.

I replied “Who asked you to?”

The street went up in smoke.

Laughing, you remained seated

while I buried my head

and choked on your joke.

Today when I woke up at seven

you were nowhere around.

This has got to be heaven

I thought,
then  knelt

to kiss the ground

you used to walk on.

Leo
 * REM Sleep Behavior Disorder