Meditation on Ruin by Jay Hopler

I've been contemplating this one since I first read it, a few days ago. Things build up-- it's no wonder we get tired sometimes. We carry so much and never, ever put it down. There's a straw out there for all of us camels I think.

Fortunately, the human spirit seems virtually indestructable. We recover, at least partially, at least enough, eventually.


Meditation on Ruin
by Jay Hopler

It's not the lost lover that brings us to ruin, or the barroom brawl,

----------or the con game gone bad, or the beating
Taken in the alleyway. But the lost car keys,
The broken shoelace,
The overcharge at the gas pump
Which we broach without comment — these are the things that
----------eat away at life, these constant vibrations
In the web of the unremarkable.

The death of a father — the death of the mother —
The sudden loss shocks the living flesh alive! But the broken
----------pair of glasses,
The tear in the trousers,
These begin an ache behind the eyes.
And it's this ache to which we will ourselves
Oblivious. We are oblivious. Then, one morning—there's a
crack in the water glass —we wake to find ourselves undone.
"Meditation on Ruin" by Jay Hopler from Green Squall