Summer mornings, as I round out
the bend in the well-traversed road,
the new sun imposes itself
in the cloudy rearview mirror,
and, for a moment, I am blind,
the way ahead obscured by gnats
of light teasing my weary eyes
the yellow white of the desk lamp
I set atop the chest of drawers
and tilted at such an angle
that I glowed as I emoted
to a rapt crowd of stuffed creatures
enthralling tales penned in crayon
on snap fresh construction paper,
words I knew would only better
as I much too slowly matured
into my God-given talents,
for my life would not be wasted
swatting the blinding memories
every blasted summer morning
as I crawl across the bridge
to the work side of the river

From my gilded terrace,
I shoo away
shirtless children
who pluck coins
from the fountain.
"They are wishes!"  I yell.
"They are fish!"  They yell back.

I don't recall the first time
I did anything;
I didn't, one day,
pick up a pencil
and start drawing the sky.

I have always been
an expanding universe
of stars and galaxies
and dark spaces
revealing itself

When I was a child,
they buried chicken bones
in the backyard,
and when I dug them up,
they told me I had
discovered dinosaurs.

The spider web cracked mirror in my room
will never regain its clean, sheer surface,
but if I look from the proper angle,
or tilt my head to the side a tad bit,
I will see a face that once reflected
the promising light in my mother’s eye.

split me open
and you will see
a tiny seed
that once might have
sprouted and clung
to a trellis
bearing lush fruit
and casting shade
but now is just
a pitless stone
that has never
seen the garden

Splayed on the grass, under the listing birch,
I bemoan to a thousand unmoored moons
floating between a million bare branches
undulating like waves in the still night,
gurgling ungracious words about climbing
when I could barely grasp the bottom branch,
hoping, one day, to climb so high I might
caress the anchored stars with humble hands.