I’ve worked hard not to be a disappointment.
This isn’t the same as a will to shine. Meanwhile
light nudges fingers around the curtain edge,
leaps to the mirror, doubles itself,
and knocks me out of bed. I open the window.
A din of crickets whites out thinking as a skunk
hurries along the road, under a sleeping car,
down the hill and gone. We are disappearing.
All my desires gnarl like burrs in his coat,
a long striped wig over twinkling rodent feet.
Decades ago, at seven a.m., I was four hours old.
How long until a young parent rose
from twilight sleep to hold me? You can’t
be a girl, she wrote in my baby book.
You wouldn’t do this to your mother.
Still loopy from the drugs, maybe, or lack
of sleep. Or just surprised
after months of dreaming me a boy lost
to sickness, famine, Roman soldiers.
Now she’s dead. I can forgive anything.
Beneath ground-mist waits a day I want to live
well. Ache is in my way, and a habit of fear,
and grief’s staticky ringing in my ears,
but the morning flares. I see what blocks
me and shoulder it aside. Look, there’s
my confidence back, tail held high.
Please, moon, kiss me.
Mediate the sun’s critical glare.
Dusty and cratered, kind and uncanny,
help me believe I delight love’s eye.
–
Lesley Wheeler, poetry editor of Shenandoah, is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Mycocosmic. Wheeler’s work has received support from the Fulbright Foundation, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers, and the Sewanee Writers Workshop; her poems and essays have appeared in Poets & Writers, Orion, Poetry, Ecotone, and Massachusetts Review.