It is all bringing me down – Writers House Review

Robert Lewis

There is a metal bar with two one-hundred-pound plates on each side,

and it’s stuck on my chest.

Instead of asking for help, I ask Olivia, “What would you do if I was a blue Jolly Rancher?”

only because she just told me her favorite Jolly Rancher is the blue one.

There are animals out there and they want something that is not square, I know,

so here’s a blue umbrella on a beach to distract them.

It’s a cloudless day in the middle of July,

the beach crowded, except no one is under the umbrella.

Does the umbrella yearn for someone to protect

from the unfiltered light of the sun?

Maybe not everything yearns.

The umbrella could yearn to be noticed.

Or it could just be happy to be alone, enjoying its summer vacation.

Happy to be out of the cement garage.

Happy to spread its limbs.

Happy to exist in the world on this sunny day.

It’s there if people need it

and if they don’t it, it will just be happy alone.

It doesn’t care about the animals that it exists for.

As the weight sits on my chest,

I imagine walking down to the edge of a lake.

The water clear, and the animals are coming, the umbrella not enough.

It is deep and fish swim around.

Thick shrubs surround the lake, with birds flying in and out.

I don’t see all this,

all I can see is the cold rock bottom, how square it looks, and the chasing animals

that want something I can’t give them.

I know they won’t stop chasing until they get it.

For now, this is all I got,

and it’s going to have to move this weight, because Olivia did nothing,

and it’s tiring me.

And to feed the animals, when you find this line,

think of this other line from John Mayer,

“Hold on to whatever you find, hold on to whatever will get you through.”

Robert Lewis graduated this past May, and is from Bradley Beach, NJ. He writes, “I hope you enjoyed this poem, if you don’t, that’s cool. I will still like this poem a lot!”