Free Entry 1, Week 10

I never mastered the art of holding an umbrella:
tilting it back, against the right shoulder
is fashionable but impractical in the case
of actual rain. Leaning it forward, brim
lower than brow, inhibits forward vision,
not to mention waxes rude to those who
I might pass, avoiding the grassy mud.
Holding it upright seems most practical,
though that offers its own difficulties
and perversions to our uniquely human hands:
to hold it on the left side, or the right?
To push it high above the scalp or pull down
in a grandmother's good-girl pat?
To lean the handle against the mple,
or push it out in any of the three dimensions
but still close enough to keep you dry.
Not bone dry because bones aren't dry,
at least not until they're bare, without
the gigantic organ holding them in
their rightful places to force us to walk
in the rain with our umbrellas.
My lover once told me that we're all just
mobile skeletons with brains, which
I told him was gross. When he had his
eye surgery, he begged to show me that
video of the laster penetrating his cornea
while he laid, unmoving, beneath the gaze
of the light shaped like an umbrella.