Life-like Living

Part 1

Life
like

what
is
life
like?

Life-
like?

How
can
a
thing
be
life-
like?

If
it
is
like
life
is
it
not
life
?

How
I
hug
the
margins
with
my
questions

***

Part 2

What has my life been like the last 10 years?  I ponder after asking a friend newly turned 40 about what her next 10 will be like in her imagining and she ruminates on the many changes . . . happenings . . . events . . . growths and losses . . . of the last 10 . . . 

And I ponder my own last 10 . . . from 2004 to now . . . trips to and from Scotland . . . friends made and shed . . . a new career – a calling . . . Iraq . . . no Iraq . . . striving to make peace with barely the language for it . . . a grandson . . . paradise and theater of the absurd – all wrapped in to one decade in one life on one tiny planet . . . 

Its significance eludes me . . . I am sure it is there but have not the facility to read the leaves of the tea and am left floundering for the meaning . . . the purpose . . . the design in a tapestry where I can only detect the faintest of threads . . . 

***

Part 3

What if I had been . . . 

President – no room for pacifism with that job description

A mother of many rather than few – would I have gotten better at it with more practice?

A dancer – but oh, the chocolate I would not have known

A Nigerian woman – would I have survived to womanhood or would I have been sold into invisibility long ago for daring to dream of reading a book?

Born a man – what secrets, what handshakes, what ways of striding the earth entitled would I know that I do not, cannot, now, with this feminine-encased carcass, know?

A waitress – would my legs hold me up at the ripe old age of almost 59?  

Born with no legs – would I hate you your easy grace?

A cow – would I have been lucky enough to have been born in India?

I suppose a life is what it is like.