Iron Mountain ski jump

Iron Mountain ski jump

Saturday, April 7, 2018

TO-DO LISTS-poem [Sat, 4-7-18]


CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter…


I read the obituary for the pretty girl
The one in the white car that skidded on the mud
And off the road into a magnolia tree
Each just about to bud, the tree and the girl
Only twenty candles on her last cake

Someone wrote the obit words
Reciting the names of those she loved
Those who loved her
And the names of what she loved
As well as who she loved
“She loved to make to do lists.”

Did that obit writer know how sharp
That line would stab into the hearts
Even of those who never knew her?
The agony
Making lists of what to do
And never marking off the lines
As done?

She probably made the lists upon her phone
But I prefer to think of her
Sitting on a weathered bench beside a lake
A slight frown upon her unlined brow
As she tries to think of three more things to write
To fill the lines at the bottom of the page
Of her small, flowered spiral notebook

I shall do three things for her

Watch a movie
in which women talk and cry
Eat an ice cream cone
while laughing at a lightning bug
Buy a tube of lipstick
which I shall give to a pretty girl like her

Hoping that one of them was on her list
Her most important list
The one on the pale pink page

JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

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