Okay so where were we
one thing has become increasingly clear to me
you cannot help us
it’s not that you don’t
or you don’t want to
you can’t
there is a big difference
she said she was done
I wonder at this finality considering
her cry
her plea
her deep impassioned sense of frailty
subsumed as she is by the lines of duty and family job and tasklist written on the white board on the kitchen wall below the portrait of four smiling faces
really now I must ask
when does what we desire
become twisted and tied up in the things that come from so long ago
and the vision that lives like a fire on a hot august night
in the belly of a whale
safeguard that little piece of yourself I tell you
tie up in bows and tape behind pretty packaging that part of the dreaming
eleven year old budding soul yearned to proclaim
with the deer antler a song rung mercilessly to the vacant sky
like a line of text held tight in type
upon a telegraph machine
we contain multitudes bound
by the best intentions and historied long arm
reach out find the grasp the hand there in the dream of the future in the vision of the human
race this course unencumbered by ancestry and assumations
find a foothold in the wide expanse of skin deep vision and discover a new world
there
I have listed the way
my life unfolds there is only one point left to make
I cross the threshold into a new life unexpected yet welcome
and turn back not to turn to a pillar of salt
but to see there a line of hands reaching out
a trail of voices and faces
asking to be taken given a hope