Certainly, I was not born
But wandered embarrassed into these days
Like a widow into her bedroom,
With a throat of new stones just beginning to cool.
It's possible I was never a child.
A child wouldn't bother with lines,
Would be sleeping or inventing kisses,
Even grieving and then forgetting,
Like leaves sifted by worms to rich dust.
I seem to have first been alive
This morning,
When the bus had not yet come,
When there was a slight wind along the street
And a coughing from the apartments,
When the sky suddenly brought me the pains
That were asleep in the lining of my face.
I made promises as a child that I remember too clearly,
That come back to me across empty beaches
In a silence that includes the rain.
Maybe I was born and then hidden all these years
In a pile of cut grass.
Of course, there are sweet memories that come
When I see a mantle or a wicker chair.
There have been moons that explained themselves,
Landscapes that appeared out of devotion.
There have been ecstatic accidents
And pears shared with lovers in the morning.
But now, as though in the middle of a tense dinner,
Shelter lies only beneath the roofs of strange mouths.
Couples embracing in the park terrify me.
Bays and rivers show the white bellies of time.
I hoard the waters of my body
To use as ink for these few lines,
These few spaces,
Because when there is a sudden singing in a crowded plaza,
Or a tree that grows into another,
Or when the cold poise of a smokestack fills me with autumn,
I catch a glimpse of a child in these sheets,
Wearing these clothes of death,
Who I've followed uncertainly all these years
Through scarcities of tenderness,
A child who I must have been.