Here I sit
Just a big lump of protoplasm
Encased in plant fiber and animal hide
No more purpose or meaning
Than a slime mold
No, a slime mold
Is at least interesting
Assembling and disassembling
To suit the moment
Bright yellow
Daring any living thing
To do something about it
Daring me
To be more than that
Or at least
That
Summer mornings, when I was very young
My father would announce an outing
And my mother packed a lunch
And gathered up my infant sister
My older brothers, eye-rolling
And infinitely wise, despairing of
The younger generation
Gathered necessities defined by long
(several weeks)
Tradition and off we trundled
Those days, people walked
And so did we
Past shoe shops and drugstores
(always a brief, longing pause)
Hill high houses and pooched porches
Scraggle lawn-bare bungalows
Vacant lots, still equipped
With bottle bases and cardboard home plates
And the occasional mildewed fielder’s mitt
Wantonly discarded in a fit of pique
Past milk jugs left in sun-swept doorways
Cars on concrete blocks, their wheels
Unseen and unimagined
Down past side streets and alleyways
And trellised garden glimpses
Down to the parkway past
The big-bricked library
Packed from floor to ceiling
With adventure, intrigue,
Piracy and noble experiment,
With love and loss,
With everything that was not us
On summer mornings
Across the broad car-fringed roadway we went
To a certain large elm
Strewn about with green immortal grass
And laid out our blankets
Ate our lunch
And dozed the day away
My brothers off on some creek-filled adventure
Was life unkind?
Probably, obliviously, inobviously,
And perfectly.
In the great withered dugs
Of Holy Mother Church
I was taught to beg God’s forgiveness
For my transgressions
Real, imagined, or only aspired to
But really, I thought,
For the sheer gall of living
For the audacity of human-ness
For the clear inexcusable lack
Of appreciation for the
Perversity of existence
As humanity
Of which I was but one
Paltry example
Now I know it’s
Not God who can forgive
But only I
For the willfulness
Of falling for that
Through the train window
Flashing eternity
Rolling, rolling, rolling
The hillsides by.
Later, I’ll say
I’ve been there,
Traveled through that place
Convinced and mystified.
Later still, I’ll return
And say
That’s not how it was
All skewed and modified
By isolation from memory
Disappointed
By lack of congruity
Deflated
By the irrefutable
I
You are meaningless, it is said,
without those who went before
in whose long shadows you strive,
in whose helix you twine
inextricably.
Ghosts, you call them,
wraiths with no claim to substance,
until, in a mirror,
you see them bounding through
your fate,
great feet tramping up the path
you thought was yours alone.
How can you be so like them?
How can it have gone unnoticed
so long?
Is nothing left to separate you?
II
Fine, let’s have it, then.
I’ll be the last witness
to poll the seasons.
But you’ve lost your will
to power, haven’t you?
Would you think your
reflection grotesque, off-putting,
if you saw me now?
Would you see an empty mask,
devoid of all you held dear?
As you wish.
We are both powerless
to divine our true meaning.
exiles child 