True love is:
                  A waxwing bird feeding
                  A cuckoo who was left in her nest
                  The starving cuckoo is pleading
                  The waxwing is doing her best.

Even at birth
My parents didn't want me
So I found different ones
but I still wonder
if they love me?
If the parents who waited nine months for me
the parents who brought me into life
didn't want me
then who would?

It would be stupid to think that they don't
They help me
Feed me
Take care of me
But
I still wonder if they really do
I can't stop wondering if they do.

Audrey is adopted,
She feels quite out of place,
In a house of strangers,
Affections go to waste.

Audrey cloaked in twilight,
With one foot in the grave,
"We'll send you to another home
If you do not behave."

Audrey wanders offwards,
Into the milky way,
Of cardboard homes and foreign tomes,
To find a place to stay.

Audrey misses long hair,
And so I'm here to fill,
The hole left by her sisters,
Who left against their will.

Audrey has no option,
But sleeping on the ground,
Deep inside our foster house,
While Mother's not around.

Audrey is adopted,
She's feeling all alone,
She's taken herself for a walk;
I hope she comes back home.

Four years old.
Four years old is the perfect age
To know enough about yourself
And not enough about the world.
To know everything you absolutely need to know
Before the world strips it away
And replaces it with a fake sort of knowing.
Four years old,
Old enough to recognize something that will drive you
For the rest of your life.
Four years old was I,
And four years old was he,
Mattie,
My Mattie,
When we met in the sticker-burr ridden play yard
Of a daycare,
And at four years old,
We became peaceful companions,
Slower,
Quieter,
And just a bit more odd,
Than the rest.
At four years old,
Mattie had a silliness about him,
And a funny way of talking through his missing teeth.
At four years old,
We avoided the violent, flying swings and sprinting, shrieking children,
And we scoured the outskirts of the yard
For four leaf clovers.
Mattie was a four leaf clover.
Incredible,
Unique,
And found by chance.
Because Mattie’s silliness and funny voice and missing teeth
Were not simply because we were four years old,
But because
Mattie came from a mom
Who couldn’t stop.
Mattie’s mom couldn’t stop doing drugs,
Not for a single day.
Not when her belly swelled with Mattie inside,
Not when he came into the world,
Breathing the air she did,
Drinking the milk she made,
Mattie’s mom couldn’t stop.
He was buried beneath clusters of clovers,
And his four, perfect leaves were nearly withered away,
When his parents found him.
His parents,
Two incredible women,
Who had so much love in their hearts,
They couldn’t help but let it overflow
Into the cup of a small child with bright eyes and dwindling breath.
Mattie,
My four leaf clover,
Is happy today.
Today,
Mattie,
No longer four years old,
But a man,
Is about to be a doctor.
My four leaf clover,
Who looked to his mothers like the most beautiful child that was ever born,
With the sharpest wit
And the most brilliant smile,
At the end of the day,
Is simply another clover.
His beauty and his value,
Are what we give him.
His rarity, his singularity,
Is something we create,
Something we fashion for him
Out of love and acceptance.
To this day,
I lean down and examine patches of clover,
The image of Mattie,
Gently counting leaves with chubby, toddler fingers,
Burnt into my memory.
And to this day,
I hold in my heart the hope,
That I will meet a child,
My own Mattie,
My own rarity,
My own treasure,
My own little four leaf clover.

The marks
that cover
the Place
that used to be
your Home . . .

Are by far,
the scars
that affect me the most.

In the womb he was connected
With a thousand years of family
Coursing through the tether
Of an unfortunate mother.
Then culled from the herd
In a distant cow town
For permanent loan.
With the pretext, the equivocation:

                 He'll have a better life.

When someone other deems to tell him,
He'll cry, he'll hide,
Reject, accept,
It's his need for human affection.

He can't forget what didn't happen,
A past that wasn't shared;
Of stories reaching back through years.
The anecdotes on celebrations,
The exaltations, deprivations,
Tales shared like bread
By lost generations.

All his life he's felt the itch
To scratch his DNA.

One day, the knock is heard,
Bells may ring,
There, standing straight on the stoop,
A refracted image of oneself,
Trans-parent cord through missing years.

Aye, there will be tears.

          (You'll explain your teenage fears,
           Your family's lack of understanding;
           The time when wanton women
           Had babies out of wedlock)

He listens to the reasons,
Stirred in the heaping crock.

He learned of love,
Was schooled with affection,
He knows he wasn't known to you,
That he was left
For personal sake.

He crosses fingers,
Like plated scissors,
To snip the cord he's hung on;
To sever the love,
You never delivered,
To a son
You never knew.

Although I may never get to meet
the woman who carried my soul
through the cosmos inside her body
from a winter's frost to a spring's warmth

I'll be grateful for the one who
spent her blood, sweat and tears
holding me in her arms, guiding me
through a journey called life

Without a doubt, I'll stitch them both
into my heart's core as they were
generous in taking time to sculpt me
into the person I am