kiss the kids good bye,
send them out on
their own find-a-way paths,
merry or otherwise,
dispatched, once and forever,
stamped, franked, posted,
Gebbie delivered,^
the poems born, borne
   are gone

never look back,
once writ and gifted,
they are an only child,
not truly orphaned
   but without parentage

miss'ed every now and then,
see them as a drive-by victims,
hit and run casualties of passing poets,
who notifiy that they saw
"so and so"
and just wanted to
let me know,
   they're ok

but never look back,
they have been disowned,
each,
a natural birth poem,
must learn
the hard way,
to stand on its own,
tested by the cruelest proctor,
   hoary time

this is the way,
the only way,
birth mother and no more,
and this why,
some know me as,
  the poet of the way...

this is my way -
my poems are my
dispatched issue,
sent out themselves alone,
to experience
cell division,
mitosis and meiosis
spawning new poetic tissue,
find their own way of sharing
  their ancestral DNA