blah. i'm full of shit. full of shit, i tell you.
Small Stones
--for CJ--
As a child, the future splintered
into spokes, like your bicycle wheel,
and all existed at once, equal in weight,
each complete. You told your mother
there would be four novels, one memoir,
twenty-seven ancient artifacts discovered,
and one divine visit to the moon.
Love was as singular as the star you wished upon
when sentimental adults encouraged it.
You thought only of a white marriage,
casting its mild and selfless light over all.
Your house would be large and wooden,
locationless, sun coming in through the walls.
In the coarse fields behind the schoolyard
you were content to gather small stones,
secure in the natural inconsequentiality
of youth. Even the most unruly garden knew
that a life began tiny and contained before
the stalk raised, the face swelled and opened.
When was the moment, I wonder, when
nature failed you, when the lives before you
merged bitterly into one, like the perfect hand
of poker swept back into the deck?
How astonished you must have been then,
to watch the hours shuffle along in the darkness,
lost like the time you stood on the bridge
dropping your best marbles into the river.
--for CJ--
As a child, the future splintered
into spokes, like your bicycle wheel,
and all existed at once, equal in weight,
each complete. You told your mother
there would be four novels, one memoir,
twenty-seven ancient artifacts discovered,
and one divine visit to the moon.
Love was as singular as the star you wished upon
when sentimental adults encouraged it.
You thought only of a white marriage,
casting its mild and selfless light over all.
Your house would be large and wooden,
locationless, sun coming in through the walls.
In the coarse fields behind the schoolyard
you were content to gather small stones,
secure in the natural inconsequentiality
of youth. Even the most unruly garden knew
that a life began tiny and contained before
the stalk raised, the face swelled and opened.
When was the moment, I wonder, when
nature failed you, when the lives before you
merged bitterly into one, like the perfect hand
of poker swept back into the deck?
How astonished you must have been then,
to watch the hours shuffle along in the darkness,
lost like the time you stood on the bridge
dropping your best marbles into the river.