ancestral grace [Explored]

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs at the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.

Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew in a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls under the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzle

or the doll's tiny shoes, don't worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic.

Go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don't even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementoes.

Don't sort the paperclips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in through the screened windows, who collect

patiently on tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience.

----Louise Erdrich

 

Done