BACK ON EARTH WITH INSTRUCTIONS

1. Read the tread of your sneakers, the running
thousand brown leaves down the slope 
to the mailbox, the bullet-holed street sign,
and when that fails, unfurl a real map, impossible,
like you, to fold back into its former self.

2. Thinking will fool you. Listen instead,
even if you need a hearing aid or strong tea 
hot enough to dissolve a swirl of honey and ideas 
about what bird you’re supposed to be.

3. It’s okay to thrash against reality. Everyone does,
even the air circulating your body, the slim cottonwood,
the black-capped chickadee. Even rocks thrash against water,
dirt against dew, muscles against gravity, dogs against sadness.

4. Don’t forget to nap, eat, open the only book
from your childhood you still have, even if missing pages. 
Take in the pictures of Heidi, Clara, the misunderstood Alps.
Then close the book and open the window.

5. Outside your thoughts, there’s a heavy snow
blurring reality so much that the sycamores don’t look
like actual trees. Wind and time erase depth perception.

6. Anyone selling instructions is not to be trusted.

7. You can always pull over to the shoulder of the road
as long as the drop from tar to dirt isn’t too steep.
You should always get out on the passenger side
even if you have to step in mud up to your ankles.

8. But how can instructions be worth their weight
in rain if you weren’t right here on earth all along?

9. What can you trust? Thaw or wind to break the snow
from the branch or the branch itself. The crack
in your heel telling you to pay attention and sit down.
The surety of hunger innate to animals and weather. 
And always that something is about to happen.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate, is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam’s Well, a novel; and The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, she offers writing workshops, coaching, and collaborative projects. Her poetry has been widely published, including in Terrain, Half and One, Poets & Writers, Negative Capability, MockingHeart Review, Two Rivers, The New Territory, Louisville Review, New Letters, and dozens of other journals.