The Zen Home Run
Jerry Judge
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Writer’s block is a living death – not like a zombie really because you’re still going through the motions and not eating anyone. It’s more like a terminal patient in shock and denial. Your kids and wife begin to exist as silhouettes. The feeling part of your gut has started to rot. Even the sexy clerk at the corner grocery fails to excite you. The brackets you picked in the NCAA tourney bomb and you don’t care. Weeks go by like maple syrup. One day your cat purrs on your chest and you cry. This must be the start. You run outside and watch a robin build her nest right beside a window ledge your cat lurks on. You admire the bird’s faith and realize that’s a coherent thought coupled with emotion. The sky is azure and you laugh hysterically and run through the neighborhood forgetting about your knee they want to replace. A neighbor tells you of a couple who fought about the brand of a new toilet until the police were called which flushed their teetering marriage. You think this is wonderful because you’ll write about it and scurry away smiling to the confusion of the gossiper. You scamper to the convenience store and the clerk’s there along with your erection that you want to shout about in glee but can only put it in a poem as a metaphor for a home run that you’re feeling going on in your mind and body before you circle the bases to your own mindful applause.