January 2023
Gary Thomas
rasselas9@charter.net
Bio Note: I grew up on a peach farm outside Empire, California. Prior to retirement, I taught eighth grade language arts for thirty-one years and junior college English for seven. I've presented poetry workshops for literary organizations, festivals, and conferences. My poems have been published or accepted for publication in MockingHeart Review, Monterey Poetry Review, and River Heron Review, among others, and in the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. I am currently vice president of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, a member of the Curriculum Study Commission and of the local writing group known as The Licensed Fools. A full-length collection, All the Connecting Lights, was released in August 2022 from Finishing Line Press.

In Which I Imagine Writing at a Standing Desk

cobbled from the bifold closet door that needs painting most,
unsprung from its hinges and placed on the fifth rungs
fashioned from wooden peach ladders set just so, typing on 
my 42-pound 1917 Underwood Herniator bought for 50 bucks,
praying its actions and my own synch for once.

My ad-libbed escritoire bows in the middle from the metal beast’s heft
as I pummel out a couple stanzas built of yesterday’s inertia
till the entire assemblage becomes a trampoline of 30-pound paper,
brimful coffee mug, Eberhard Faber eraser, and pocket thesaurus.

I wait for the third stanza to settle itself and glance at a cardinal 
as it bobs on a pink dogwood branch outside the window well-used
for early morning jumpstart stabs at something sensible to say
about the transitory nature of flight or life or absurdly colorful birds.

The fourth stanza starts with images of Muppet balloons chasing
and replacing the ladders, the typewriter’s innards now transparent 
as vials of new ice, everything afloat and alight with alternatives
to the familiar lap desk, laptop, lack of luster or legerdemain,
alive with the ready wonder of what may happen next.
©2023 Gary Thomas
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