GODDESSES COME IN ALL COLOURS
C Ra McGuirt
Tottering into Toronto
On my neuropathic feet
Eyes scraped by the fluorescents
Trying very hard to hold
Onto the official crap
A human seems to need to cross
All the world’s invisible lines
Stopping to fill the customs card:
Who I was, where I had been
Just what I was bringing in
Where I was going now
My flight number and
My first dog’s name
I realized the writer’s sin:
I had brought along no pen
And those available to the mob
On their fragile beady chains
Had been pushed down into their barrels
By some vandal who thought it fun
It was late. And quite bumfuzzled,
I looked about as if some God
(Maybe Thoth or Mercury)
Would send a pen in a thunderclap
(I was too shy to ask for help—
This man who once invited Pan
To dance at a Reading and got Him there,
And wore pink tights for 2,000
Wrestling the County Fair...)
When an undistinguished little girl
With loose hair of early straw
Standing with her pensive mom
Piped up: “I have a pen for you!”
“Thank you so much, dear!” I gasped
And grabbed the pen which I assumed
To be a cheap little plastic job
With decals of Hannah Montana,
And began to fill the card:
NO, HELL NO, TO EVERYTHING—
No farm products, reptiles, birds
And just enough Skoal to get me by;
That’s all I bring besides myself...
I admit that amusement came bubbling
Through my depression and weariness
As I noticed the ink was shocking pink
It was a little girl’s type of pen, all right.
I went in the search of girl and mom
To give it back, but they had cleared,
So I stuck it in my jacket pocket.
Sad that I had had missed a chance
To return the kindness she’d loaned to me.
Later on I when I got home
My wife gave me comfort and Tramacet
I stuck my hand into my coat
Looking for a Loony or something else
And pulled an extremely cool sweet pen
A uni-ball VISION extra-fine
Water and fade-proof with sleek design
Those things run $4.99
Solid and grey and silver and my
Very favourite sort of pen
With ink of mysterious midnight black
The kind I start poems in hotels with,
And I thought “Well I’ll be damned! I guess
I had that good pen all along.
But where’s the one that nice young girl
Gave to me? I seem to recall
It was a cheapie and far more light
Than this, and I swear unicorns
Or stars were on that little thing
That little thing loaned me.
Well damn again! Her pen is gone!
I wanted it for a souvenir
Of human kindness at nasty times
Then I wrote DAMN!
On a scrap, and the ink
sure enough was shocking pink.
