Now His Own
-for Max

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,

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

2.
When the lid that
holds the fragile in
lays itself flat,
dimpled like a tire,

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?