No worries. Just a bit dug around in

Like some dry earth garden

Attacked with an unmerciful hoe.

This happened when I realized

That thing I used to say, that I didn’t like kids much

(There was no understanding to be shared?)

Well, an impossible little Jack popped from the box

          When I wound it up:

It turns out the child I didn’t like is me. My inner, to be exacting.

Now what?

No wonder she hardly visits, but has that,

“my chip’s right here. Where’s yours?”

We once drew sabres but now poignards suffice

Honed to lethal: set beyond Blood –

I think that’s my liver hanging from hers.

I don’t feel too good.

Hey, listen, I’d a sworn it not to be me

But all this Later, now I look away & wonder.

It’s only that it’s never mattered;

I was so obviously wrong about everything!

First & foremost, about her.

I chose to misinform myself first,

I chose to trust the weight

If I balanced. My sign, too,

First nature to me, now.

I only know the numbers

Not the matters a-weigh

But sudden-like it came off

There stands little between the wound

And continuing on.

I’m seeing myself again, this unnatural self

Who knows no meaning save the cerebral

When she must ought be found waiting in

The confessional of Spirit.

For the first time in years, I’m genuinely frightened

(she knows everything: she was there from the beginning)

My heart tears its reins from the

Tethering tree

Stumbling off

Carrying that unholy girl.

Now what shall I do?

Now where who do I call?

Once everyone knows everything

I’m kind of barnacle embarrassment

Who, seeing this, even knows me?

They would never know my face!

Do I stop then? No, of course not.

Beginnings are all ever given to me

I know little of middles or endings

Most certainly not this one.

God help me.

The child is on her own.

SOME POEMS ARE GIVING BIRTH

An idea gone material

Reaches for a pen & white paper

Closing not around the plastic

But on the idea

Clasping it in taut fingers

Saying what to say

Until it speaks on its own.

Too soon for me,

I like control…

While Surrender is much more eloquent

Her vocabulary faultless, flawless.

I KNOW NO PERMANENCE

At three years, I pack stuff up & go

I hate the restraints I feel

Like all this time I’ve picked up rocks

Instead of poked at clouds or found feathers

And time’s come to put all those big things down.

Some flash jealous, some disregard, or vanity, or to mediocre flesh

I took no time; but like I said,

She knows everything –

There from the start,

She remembers being human, too

I more remember what things were called.

She’s the hum of the song I sing

With a child’s grace to forgiveness

Caught with you, I am move in the Presence,

In the DNA I was cast,

This you, this me, you wise, brown-eyed,

Braided child

With two sets of eyes since one never was enough.

No wisdom for earthlings; she minded

Herself like a science experiment, full of reactions

Of bromides, quick trips to the interior

When the exterior redlined.

This, that we thought a landscape

Instead a portrait

Most likely, a mirror.

We both don’t want to remember.

We both can’t do much else.

What happens when the

Earth-senses fail?

Like some , yeh, think about it,

About stuff I never even

Thought about; it was more omnipresent than that…

This is harsh, tho. Two at once?

Embellish it now: embroider it now

A black jet-bead ribbon threading the frame

The mourning of what I’ve left of my mortality.

Two senses in the same day?

Lost to some disease I never wanted to get involved in

Especially my sense of smell”

Which I mercilessly mocked my Mother over as she’d none.

“Carol, what does this smell like?”

A dread call from the opened refrigerator

Mother waiting, eyes over her shoulder

Would I come into the kitchen?

Would I dare not?

This is a truly Cosmic Upside!

Knocked me silly: my teeth moved up in my jaws.

My friend said there’s more flavors in New Mexico

Than hot.

Now I think he spoke too soon; seems where I’m goin’.