It's just poetry, it won't bite

An Agoraphobic’s Worry Beads


02.24.11 Posted in words to linger on by

Maureen Donatelli’s poem Fractions appeared here in January. Maureen gives us a sense for her range with this expansive poem today.

An Agoraphobic’s Worry Beads

By Maureen Donatelli

Oh, but the sky is a quarrel

of tongues flashing metallic light.

It has come on slow, sifting through

the heavy laden hand of afternoon,

blue breathing out clouds,

their shadows casting a velvety

grey skin over the veranda

and a few spits of rain splat

like steel bullets into the dust scrawled drive.


I wait on the porch, my sanctuary, my tomb.

I wait and I worry over the workers

hunched in the wide open fields behind

the house, blueberry filled trays

at their feet, wide brimmed straw hats

with rings of mottled brown sweat upon their heads,

dozens of nimbus shadows swallowing faces,

ghostly indigo stained fingers murmuring,

probing, pulling, dropping, a rhythmic

harvest over this dry shell of earth.


I worry over the hummingbirds I love,

their trilled prayers cast to the bustling wind,

they must watch intent and safe, they must,

from near the tops of swaying trees

with their tiny cup nests filled

with baby beaks crying–what if one

falls out, I must not think of that–those little

lustrous bird bodies press hard

into twigs and grass and bits 

of string–such industry from our leavings.


I worry over all manner of fish

fighting the torrent of foam

in the river ten miles down the road.

It might rise too quick if a deluge comes,

their beautiful luminous ribbon bodies flung

against rock, bruising and slicing and peeling

their jeweled scales, released blood

swirling, diluted, lost with their spawn

on the banks and dry death.


I worry over planets and stars

and nebula spinning light years away

in the beautiful black depth of this frigid

universe. I worry one will tilt on its axis

just a fraction too far, yanking at our gravity

so this storm becomes a tempest biblical

beyond all belief; or the ground beneath this porch

will split in two swallowing us whole, and whose planets

are so far away, too far for my worry

to reach, too far and cold and empty

for there to be care.


Lightning fills my eyes. Ions rise cutting heat

to the quick. A trigger sparks, I abandon why;

there is not turning back. The cord snaps,

beads of worry clatter one by one

to the splintered wood at my bare feet. I open

my mouth, I roar with the thunder. I rise,

I breathe deep, I skin fear from my mind

in long gory strips, I take three

shallow steps off the porch and release myself

to it all.




One Response to “An Agoraphobic’s Worry Beads”

  1. Brava, I followed your every move and took the leap.

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