With what gloves do you handle
Your mother
The one who wonders at you
What pieces of your heart do you hold
For her alone
Will you rise to all she knows you are
And meet her at her pace
Catch her if you can!
With what boots do your walk upon
Your mother
The one who provides for you
What segment of your sinew do you share
For her creatures
Will you champion her air and terroir
And give your dying breath
Back from whence you came!
Is this sinking or rising
Or the most poisonous kiss
Is it headache or lovestruck
Or dream paralysis
Is it boot spurs or silver lining
Or ricochet talk
Is this school days or nowadays
Or someone else’s walk
Plowing through the wonder of if
The if only, the what if
The excitement and heartache of if
The I won’t give up on the if
The I do love you, not the if
Bulldozing down doubt around if
When she opined
I laughed
Thinking she’d learn she was wrong
In due time
She’d find her heart’s desire
Actualized after all
Now her recant
I hear it
Arriving soon from some distance
But this time
I’ll find her prophesied words
Unmistakably meant for me
We’re supposed to be calm through all this
Act unaffected
Not try to reverse-spin the Earth on its axis
In an attempt to double-see the bizarre we saw
To test it against the age-old version of gravity
And ask the person standing next to us
Did we see what we just saw?
Memorialize. What. We. Just. Saw.
For posterity
Meanwhile, let the shadows call us crazy
Don’t ask them about truth
I’d walk away from that song
Stand up
Assuredly and
Move as far from
Smothering, dark guitar riffs
Microphone too close to the lips
Smacks of the 70’s
Music, loosely-defined
Sounds no one thought much of
To this crowd, though, it’s fly
But I’m leaving the headache
The poor acoustics
The noise for these poor ears
Behind
Cue the fog machine and strange piano
You have not sweet-talked a comet
Stared into the eyes of the stars
Nor courted planets
Made love to the vast
Or watched a new galaxy birthed
You have become one with The Universe
In three years too much
Of my ascending pain
Did I shortchange the machine
If I bared enough skin
As I suspect I did
Did I play fast and loose at the game
In the gamble of life
With the risk I embraced
Did I fail to take The One last chance
If the mountains would cry
They would echo my “No”
Did I fail to drink of unseen truths
I could never get these counters clean
enough
Stone cold, loud, black granite
Flecked with all my faults
I could never make them gleam bright
Enough, now
Everything that touched those surfaces
Shattered and still makes my hands bleed
LisaRosier.com 