Remember, the one you had in 7th grade –
you thought you could keep it going forever.
Where is it now? In storage,
with your folks’ old stuff you never
sorted through, so much to throw away.
Remember, fifty years ago, how that hula
hoop encircled you, a spinning body-
halo. You were a spiral-wand, string on a bow,
caught up in perpetual swing.
No more thought than a bird flies.
What part of the anatomy holds a circle
aloft? Get that hoop out, give it
a twirl. It drops off level, droops to your
knees, your ankles, a discarded skirt.
How could you let it come to this?
Remember how you used to have the knack.
Keep trying, till the hoop spins once
for each year of your life. Tomorrow,
double that – your body moving in spirals
of sun as if you could go on forever.
BIO
I’m a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. My poems have appeared in American Literary Review, International Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and I’m included in the anthology, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). My book The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006) was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. I’m a finalist in this year’s Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange.