Excerpt from Little Boy Blue: A Memoir in Verse
23
perhaps the son goes & one day comes back
or the sister goes & finds her brother &
his two dogs brings them back
or the mother goes & finds her son &
the going back goes by way of compassion
for the self by the self of sister for brother
of brother for sister for the first & second
fathers & for the stepfather [for fathers! for fathers!]
for the child who was who is not now a child
for the girl who was a mother [who is always a mother]
& the mother of the girl who is not & was
forgiveness like a cloth flying through the air
flying of its own accord billowing up & out
winds blowing across the cloth flying unanchored
& rippling with the screams of childbirth
screams that turn quiet the quiet of the morning
after birth of pale light in the room of first nursing
the cloth that flies through the air to bring
kindness to the child with his ardor to be born
& to the mother with her wish the child be parted
from her body a song cloth sings to clouds
clouds tinted by time of day or night & the climate
the season by the gritty or sheer quality of light
daughter unto mother unto grandmother unto son unto
father unto grandfather unto husband unto wife unto
corpse unto slippery-shouldered infant passing out
of the body mothers turning toward daughters
toward sons & sons toward daughters forgiving
their mothers forgiving their fathers & nowhere
to be bourn on a cloth through the wind-rippled air
the cloth flying past this generation & the next
& the one unto that the cloth shaded
or brightened by darkest night by brightest day
flying through windstorm & rainstorm
through blizzard & fog unstoppable unassailable
through drought & flood flying light
wind-rippled cloth passing through air
& it is no more than this no more than this