Lines Composed upon Changing a Diaper
Marian upstairs is anxious for an update
from the extended care facility
where her husband is dying.
Four blue macaws bustle through
the airspace above the neighborhood.
Her footfalls go cursing from room to room.
Here, the toddler testifies,
“Noooo poops!”
But the toddler is lying.
I tell him there are nine spiders living inside
the walls for every person in a building.
They spin their twilit colonies
in an alternate dimension rippling
beneath the drywall.
Termites romancing in the joists.
We worry about so much
more than ourselves, I tell him.
But, I tell him, it’ll all be alright,
because it’ll all be alright,
though not all of us will live long enough to agree.
One night, we hear Marian’s husband has broken
back into himself through a skylight in his own mind
demanding to see his wife again, demanding
the nurses release him again,
demanding a Rueben from a diner
in Brooklyn that folded in ’96,
but by morning, he’s ghosted
back into his framework.
From the exterior view, your birth
is exactly as inevitable as your death.
I know not the schematics of why, baby,
but I remain devoted to my task,
wiping you clean, buttoning you up,
answering your every complaint
with a grammar you can’t understand.
