Parenthood is always a gamble.
That crap shoot fusion of egg and sperm,
The flesh explosion of another life into ours,
The atomic challenge of being human
With its associated fallout of trying to be

Even a better person than we are.
We seem to forget ourselves
Under the mushroom cloud of the nuclear family,
Putting aside our wants for someone else.
Every child comes with a price:

Those things we settle for,
Those dreams we let go of,
And that promise there is never enough time to keep.
Then these children become people of a sort,
And grow in their parasitism hopefully toward mutualism.

We are always seeking
A better life for those we spawn,
Perhaps this ticket is a winner,
Perhaps just another whiner.
And maybe one day

They will even buy our story.
This morning we wake like every morning,
Make our tired bed, fix our low fat breakfast,
And we sell ourselves again. We wonder at where
The time has gone. We wonder

When they grew up and how they know
To speak, to walk, to even breathe now
Without our constant neglected guidance,
But we wonder most if they will ever know
How much is enough to ask for their own lives.

Then one morning
All children wake up,
Make their own bed, fix their own breakfast,
Go out into the world
And sell them selves.

1.

When the steam rises
from rain in quiet
puddles of reflection,
the hungry night sky

darkens the way
like shards of black china
shattered on the shining
skin of the street,
stretches

beyond the silk
of near white mist
and the hard glare
of the distant,

beyond what we know
of where we go
and what we’ve learned
from where we’ve been,

even beyond the frowning
edge of what we
sometimes call
the horizon.

2.

When the lid that
holds the fragile in
lays itself flat,
dimpled like a blown tire,

like an emptied womb,
its afterbirth of light
finally shed in triumph,
we wonder

at what we have started
in this day of our breath,
at what feeds on
what we leave undone.

Who is this child
we are birthing
into this storm
of inadvertent hatred?

Will this mirror
of strewn tears
reflect a path
now his own?