![]() Not a RoseA Poem by Kherry McKay![]() Idealize this!![]() Copyright © 2009 by Kherry McKay
Not a Rose
“I don’t think idealizing me. . . is helpful. . . . [There is]
a danger of holding someone up to impossible standards
to which no human can possibly conform!”
If perfection were mountains, she wouldn’t be the peaks. Instead, she’d be down in the wet valley flowing lazily on a river
on an inner tube, smiling; driving people crazy with her nonchalance.
If perfection were good cooking, she wouldn’t be a fine restaurant. She’d be a McDonald’s Happy Meal, enjoyed by a kid who’d never before been to McDonald’s but who’d dreamed of going every day of his life.
If perfection were a fast car, she wouldn’t be a Ferrari. She’d judder along, a ’72 Beetle, its muffler gone, debouching smoke in six directions. Everywhere, she’d break down, and motorists like me would pull over to offer assistance. She’d lean back to one side,
happily surprised to get the support, as we greased ill-equipped hands with her VW sootiness, our heads sweating,
grateful, nonetheless to be of help. If perfection were a flower, she wouldn’t be a red rose blooming in spring; she’d be one of the little white flowers growing impossibly in my basement deep down in the darkest crevices that keep the mice alive in winter when all other food has run out. If perfection were a poet, she wouldn’t be Shakespeare, or Auden, or Eliot; She’d be the hairy guy dominating in my writing group who quietly feeds all the stray cats of the neighborhood and calls his mother each week to tell her he loves her. And if perfection were a poem, she wouldn’t be this poem. She’d be the regular crap I write at three in the morning, frustrated, breaking pencils, sighing. . . shouting and saying to literature and no one in particular: “F**k this! There will never be an end!” © 2009 Kherry McKay |
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