With reverence for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and with special thanks to Robert Okaji for supplying the title that breathed life into this poem
Even when you are a one-year-old jumping out of your crib
(you have no reason for having jumped, but once it’s done,
and the thud you’ve made that was loud but didn’t hurt…
With apologies to John Keats
You know, you shouldn’t go to Cannon Beach
To brace for a flood in the parking lot,
Nor in optimism attempt to reach
On foot the corner store…
What cause did I provision for my own death
to be ordered & carried out? Which of my features
amounted to monstrosity? My prescience to forewarn your
Lycian forebears of cataclysmic storms & volcanic eruptions? (…)
Photo by Cameren Harper
It isn’t enough, it seems, that we’ve again afforded them
a safe haven on our porch in which to rear their broods:
The once-adorable, amiable models of avian parental prowess…
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When this diminishing skin of self-pity refuses
to slough off & relinquish its groaning contents,
my pain sends me inward to my prehistoric depths…
For Mike
My sixteen year-old daughter wants
dessert at ten o’clock on a Friday night,
so right there & then…
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On Raxacoricofallapatorius,
our people, peculiar and calcium-based,
have gases escaping the pores in our skin…
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Sure, I’d had a worm’s eye view of what I’d be asking
for by opening that can, but it wasn’t enough to keep me
from taking it in the grip of my one hand, & sinking
the opener’s tiny, circular saw into the tin-lined-steel lid
with the stubborn squeeze of my other…
Make me an offer I can’t refuse here!
Photo by: Cameren Harper
Remember when
your child’s heart led your head
like a garden snail’s head leads its footed belly…
When the glacial lake outburst flood first scored
her watershed dawn into the earth’s bones
she was meant to be…
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SLHARPERPOETRY 