in my mind are a lot of reusable adjectives
like light textures or shades to get messy with because for once
I have found
the secret to lengthening each day golden
because in my golden mind is a jumbo
golden two-and-a-half-foot tall number-two pencil
with which I keep drawing onto the neural air
a golden box in jumbo golden ink over and over
between breaths my golden box of breathlessness
each fat line or leg of which is a trophy I award myself
for the feat of keeping
the never-ending going forward of my ambition and unease
at bay
a record of my mind that golden jumbo jet
frozen in mid-flight in mid-shine
as if detained in a golden-framed photograph
and the secret my friend is to jimmy wide the space
between each golden breath
like a gym bag full of golden bricks to climb inside
and to lie there still and to curl around each second
and I believe we must commemorate
ourselves more often for little golden squares
like this one
like skidding a jumbo eraser through the rulebook of time travel
like restraint
how in middle age
we who have too many times been too guilty
of the crime of shoving too much of whatever too quickly inside us
must slow down and praise our new golden-gloved grip
on the slippery golden gift of the present
and the grit it takes in middle age
to hold back any army of Clydesdales
from their obsession with the ending to hop off
to meander instead to the green center
of the horse track and for a golden moment
swat at all the golden butterflies
to sing into a few flutes of grass
while every mouth of the outcome-craving audience goes silent
and the sun goes on goldening the uneaten chili dogs
and what a new frame of mind about life it must take
for me and people my age like me
to ignore the short odds of our own deaths when running
full of high heart calcium scores and Diabetes
for us to ignore our genetics
and the betting board altogether
and to find the ability to fuck around in the green center of the racing circle
even longer than we had intended like we will live forever
to spend two hours on one glass of Malbec
or one golden poem by Philip Levine
to swish and smell the fresh must of midwestern spring there
to hold back the cruel hooves
which have always torn up my green life
in the name of storming ahead
in the game of defining my life by how it finishes
today again I begin the real work
of holding back my golden-painted toes from going there
instead I go back again to the widening of worlds between breaths
like my friend Billy who allows himself
only one cigarette per day
I think of him somewhere in the evening
outside under the vined pergola
listening to the sleepy leaves on the pin oaks grow into deeper canopies of nuance
his daughters tucked tight in their twin beds inside
and dreaming the golden dreams of airplane wings
and each mouthful of smoke of my friend’s
is holding back whatever loud momentum
for a moment
from throwing his body and his thoughts out of it
my friend standing there in wingtips in a funny fish tie
my friend the civics teacher defying physics
blowing his own golden coins onto the air
and this one cigarette
being held here in his right hand
and kept from further burning by virtue of our imagination
is reason enough
today or any day to think of his victory
and to keep myself inside
for as long as I can manage it
this little shoplifted breath of celebration
by Ephraim Scott Sommers
A singer-songwriter, poet, and essayist, Ephraim Scott Sommers is a Type-1 Diabetic and the author of two books: Someone You Love Is Still Alive (2019) and The Night We Set the Dead Kid on Fire (2017). His third book, Diabetic Gumdrops, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag in 2026. Currently, he lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and is an Associate Professor of English at Winthrop University. For more words and music, please visit www.ephraimscottsommers.com.
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