Beckon the Broken

Beckon the Broken

It's easy to look back and see the moment clear: Your schoolyard
uncertainty, clumsy mouth and hands, the depth of drowning in your
eyes I missed (dismissed?), mislabeled as lovable, mendable, lost.

Any wild thing would by instinct have abandoned, shunned or
devoured you. Like that. Like nothing. Not for nothing. But not this
cracked-open, seeking girl. Never we humans with our stupid smarts.

We beckon the broken--thinking we can out think our guts.

Avoiding the Mirror

Avoiding the Mirror

For weeks you've somehow managed it, no small miracle
of maneuvering in a culture fixed on form, obsessed by polish,
fixated on each furrowed mark of wit and wonder and weather.

Now spring and sun collude each time you pass a pane. You're
drawn like string, like bees, like being called--to face your face. To
see if you're still there. A sort-of-you confronts you in the glare.

Accept the dare.

Breaking

Breaking

We forget our first relationships to limbs: Our own and those
of the broad-armed trees we climb. Our earliest climbing is just to
learn we can; and then, to reach for fruit, for freedom--to ascend.

Our earliest running is just to learn we can; soon comes flat-out
flying--the urgency, the need that springs from being newly, nearly
free. We forget our first relationships to limbs.

Our earliest falling is just to learn we can.