Randy Smit

TOILET TALK

So the photo has a woman
lying in a chaise lounge, oceanside
at sunset and the words say: Relax, Nothing
Is Under Control. This is what I offer
before quieting again to listen to the showerhead's
reliable, ordered dripping, to get alone, unconscious
as possible.

I think I'm all set is what I'll
say to the student nurse in just a few minutes, I

hope. But first – Even my sense
of God being in control seems to
be changing, I say, it's much more like
a director of a musical, I mean certainly in charge
of what might… but then, I guess
more as a maestro, a muse, thrilled with
harmony, the soaring of hearts out
in the seats, the flautist, third chair
bassoonist, stagehands and soloists each rapt in
their singular, lustrous offerings, the conductor
at the center of the grand production – yeah, maybe
that's who, that's how.

Both at our task, when
the phone rings we let it go and listen as the heat
blows through the vented house as she ponders all that God must know yet will not do and all
that God must do without us ever knowing.

Seated in careful rows in front of me, the sparkling
white bathroom tiles. Again I count them. Don't
ask me how many there are. Even when I count
them all, I'm usually on to something else or I start
and then stop trying to find out, because I'm all set.

* * *

NOT BAD, AND YOU?

We could find something
on TV, see what's in
the kitchen cupboard.
I could recall an
epiphany, light a candle, be
a champion, eat
potato chips.

Against – again,
why shouldn't it flow
like honey, ease of

the bees? The sun

was out, a bird sang, you said
that was all you needed. Still
it was cold.

She was the sort
to reach down and take up
that first one red fallen
leaf.

You saw one
this morning, didn't you? You left it there.

Randy Smit is founder and director of Compassionate Connection, an organization offering pathways of practice to creative renewal. He and his wife live in Holland, Michigan where he continues to explore poetry, essays and short fiction as a freelance writer.