Song of My Having
Raised to live in the expectation of angels,
speaking trees, sinkholes, and suffering,
I plummet on a tenuous threshold
only one dog’s bark from holy instruction
or a paramedic’s bag landing in the hallway.
And yet compelled irreparably to love,
I put my breath onto the mirror,
and toast the ground as much as the snow:
this is life at the top, I know. I know.
To have survived this far. To have gotten
away with myself and wept into a clearing.
There was a chance that a bird took
instead of a boy. That was what happened
in my case. And in my case, I was the bird.
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