“Y” Is A Crooked Letter

What kind

of anarch

am I

on my

best days?

The kind

that eludes

the prisons of

“ists” and “isms”

for the

freedom

of the

“Y”.

Why?

That is

the question.

During

my childhood

daze

my mother

dismissed

my incessant

questioning

of her

authority

(my why-ning

as she called it)

with her favorite

parental

pronouncement,

“Y

is a

crooked letter.”

Her disarming words

as inscrutable as

a kaballah spell

repetitively employed

in the hope

of confining

my untamed

anarchic sensibilities

within the

hard certainties

of the

alphabet.

Not to be

outdone,

my own

alphabetical weapons

have always been

(direct) action verbs,

laughing lettered

accomplices,

strategically invoked

verbal maneuvers,

for artfully dodging

the “ism”,

nimbly sidestepping

the “ist,”

and

eagerly embracing

the convulsive beauty

of the

“Y”.

A flock of

Why-words

Joyfully

taking flight

from the

sharpened tip

of the

critical crook

at the

overflowing end

of the word

anarch-Y.

Each why

the harbinger

of new

beginnings.

Inspired by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s response when asked if he was an anarchist. “On my best days,” he said with an honest modesty. To paraphrase Ferlinghetti, I am a poet “on my best days.”

Ron Sakolsky publishes Oystercatcher on Denman Island, B.C.