When All Else Fails
I want to offer you this pebble
of wisdom that at first will
rub between your big & second toe
and chafe more than comfort
but do it anyway, get out
& take your failures
to the beach, ski the valley floor
and up and down hills until your
mind goes still or ride the path out
to Pepperell for no other reason
than to listen to the falls & breathe in
those river smells while you pedal your blues
away, go to your favorite library & wander
the stacks with abandon reading aimlessly
among book friends, sail out the back
door even if you’re wearing someone
else’s coat and your shirt has a stain
dribbled down the front, stop beating
up on yourself, we all know more than
a few people who will do that for us
not because they’re right
they just don’t know any better
Joanne Holdridge lives in Devens, MA, but spends as much of the winter as she can skiing the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Before she was able to devote her winters to skiing, she taught poetry and literature courses to ESL students at Bunker Hill Community College for three decades.
