White sky, no stars, no gray tendrils to reach out, or fade,
shaken clear behind the walnut, no loose scuds
higher than this hunter's moon. White sky.
At twelve years old I copied a psalm in pencil on an index card,
wrote over it again in blue pen. At school I read it to myself
when the sick fear flew in that something already not right
was becoming bottomless, a stain growing up with me.
Metaphors now crowd me like that fear, grow hooks. I can see their sting.
Was it guilt, this fear? Kept place in books with it,
sucked on a dread you could crib in your palm,
succored by vagueness, delivered by the end.
I saw my mother's eyes only once glazing layer on layer
as long as she did not cry, violent sea‑change sharp as rage,
hearty like desperate laughter.
She was pushing my rock‑shaped brain up to the tip of a hill
where it wouldn't stay, or I was a tumor pecking her gut,
and she bit at herself to stop me.
Someday when I can't speak its name I'll give in to some trouble ahead,
precipitate of details survived, the child's psalm still lost
but its sound winding down all around faithfully
as if shook from a bell, the gentle hollow begging
Turn thou to me, and be gracious to me.
But break a heart like that in a legend and you became a weed,
you turned into a pig, punished instantly forever.
You never remembered again.