Minor Defects Will Not Affect Wear
A poem by Tricia McCallum

Minor Defects Will Not Affect Wear

How can you care not
For this earthly life?
Even with its vagaries,
Its ragtag beginnings,
Unspeakable endings.

Remember how
The latte at the corner café that late afternoon
Arrived as the autumn light dappled your newspaper just so,
Intertwined hearts atop the foam,
Courtesy of the beaming waitress who announced
She was getting married.

You sometimes reach the bus just in time.
Blood tests come back perfectly normal.
Simple mini lights transform a sad house.
A fresh fall of snow perfects a neglected yard.

Awaken to the astonishing delights of the
Here and now.
The two-legged terrier with the tailor-made chassis,
The tired little girl in the shopping cart who smiles back,
A favorite Phil Collins song on the car radio
In the pouring rain.

There are blessings.
They must be heeded.
It doesn’t get better.
It may be enough.

About the Author:

Tricia McCallum is a Glasgow-born Canadian, a Huffington Post Blogger, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and Best of the Net winner. She has two poetry collections in print: The Music of Leaving (Demeter Press 2014) and Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered (2011). She publishes her prose and poetry online and wherever she can find good homes, blogging about women’s rights, mental health, wretched jobs she’s had (and they are legion), and even more wretched blind dates (also legion).

She writes about almost anything: falcons in Ireland, elephants being traipsed through the Queen’s Midtown Tunnel, stray island dogs, beleaguered mothers, small town beauty queens, and ill-mannered neurosurgeons. Underlying it all is her curiosity about how people navigate their lives and what it is they struggle with under the surface.

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