as a new coin and fit for spending. Now?
Nothing is allowed to be exquisitely itself.
Even a kiss is a trotline heavy with hooks,
trawling up all kisses past.
Perhaps God isn’t omniscient, just old
enough all patterns are laid bare. Our lives
not preordained, just predictable:
how even empty rooms are now crowded
with my dead. Yet when I was
a pair of grass-greened knees, even the birds
seemed to ask, What do you want to be
when you grow up? As though transformation
were possible. But my metamorphosis
was the ordinary kind: that boy
into this man. Still, I hope
some mystery remains. May the grass
that will soon grow from me whisper
all the answers I wish I’d given: A warm temple
in a wintry place. A welcoming bed for those I love best.
A lake deep enough to hold everyone’s longing.
