The sky is the quartermaster
But you are it’s eyes,
Currying favor from
Life’s narrow surprise;
The days of your weather
Arrive fair or foul,
Delivering artifice;
As much as allowed.

I sail in your auspices,
Partake of your airs;
Not minding the skies,
Whether cloudy or clear,
For found nowhere else
Are the things you are giving;
And till your arrival,
It’s not really living.

Burn his words and letters,
Remove his touch from mind,
Forget his smell, however well;
Some fetters cannot bind.

Take his pictures from their frame,
Remove his dreams, before you sleep;
It's true the mind can be retrained-
But as for memories, those you keep.

Bored meeting again,
And we’ve assembled ourselves,
Well situated, to see the clock,
Later arrivals take the leftover chairs
And the words begin to drone.

Pencils getting pushed,
While we’re thinking, how’d we get here;
We left in such a rush,
Our brains are scrambled mush,
When suddenly there’s a silence-

A response is now required;
More murmuring and muttering,
Chair legs being squawked,
Drawings on white boards,
Handouts passed about:

We wish that we just had the guts
To get up; walk right out.
Our lives are lived in neutral,
While clocks hammer out our days;
We owe our every bit of food

To something someone says.
This meeting feels interminable,
In so many different ways,
And just when we’re most sure, we’ll die-
Adjournment comes; the end.

I was in trouble again.
I'd just awakened our baby- again.
Most mothers want their new baby to sleep;
That was their most prolific time of day,
But not me; I was afraid.
Sudden infant death was known
To stalk new babies;
How could I be sure
Death wasn't stalking her this very moment;
Slowing her breaths, her heartbeats,
Taking her away, by one sly degree at a time
To the land where there are no sweet baby dreams.
That cry of awakening was a drug for me;
A reassurance. I needed my fix.
I couldn't stop doing it.
But babies need their sleep.
So one day, her father sat down calmly
And he told me,
She wants to keep living much more strongly
Than you could ever wish it for her,
Her being is strong and it has an incredible
Will to stay alive.
Somehow, I finally got it.

Years later, and somebody had to give me
The adult version of this talk; she was nearly grown;
You can't live her life for her, can't suffer
All her pains for her, instead.
How many more times will I need reminding-
How many more days will she live
On the outside of my body, instead?

His beautiful complexity is difficult,
Confuses me; my neurotic inner child
Wants to be beaten or serenaded,
It doesn't understand many-layered things;
His whispered confidences, less alienating
Than others, made me trust too soon,
And his atoms, more colorful than
His brothers painted-on coats.
My being turns all around his center;
My wheels to his drum,
My arc to his sun,
Laughter when he's coming,
Cries when he's gone-
Till I'm reduced-
Subtracted-
Done.

The robotic surgeon didn't blink
Smoke, swear, or fool around;
He was the newest design of science
His metal feet firmly on the ground.

Robotic surgery was the latest
Improvement over the manual kind
There were no variations in technique;
No reliance on flaky mind.

He was diligent and precise
Cutting flesh to invisible templates;
He never erred and he never missed
Never once paused, to vacillate.

Trusted beyond the regular surgeon,
Using his fragile, shaking hands;
The robotic surgeon could do anything
Because he wasn't just a man.

The newest miracle of science was hailed
As the end, to the older style;
But one day the program blew a fuse-
And he cut her head off, by a mile.

What's easiest in coming is never as appreciated
As that over which we must expend ourselves in agonies,
Give birth to, by fully stretching open our being.

What's easiest to lose is never forgotten again;
We had it once, in the sweaty, half-closing palm of our hand
Studying it for long seconds, contemplating it's beauty there,
Imagining it to be ours alone, forever;
But something turned our head for a moment, a second
And at that instant, it flew.