55. We Would Give You The World

          We Would Give You The World

 

The sun of your concentric universe,

you will marry Mommy, have babies yourself,

stay home with Daddy, and live in this town forever,

doing your Work in home and barn and garden,

riding high in the same carseat in

the same big truck on the same errands, between

the farm where you feed the cows and the farm supply store

catfood and birdseed come from, back and forth

from trout at the golf course to perch at the apple orchard,

maple syrup in spring, the leaves each fall,

from the inn that is called the Inn to

the market known as the Marketplace around

and around like rides at the Fair between people's houses

named, if named at all, for those who live there.

So it was

that the Christmas of your Third Birthday, we gave you

your mother's map of the places you love, in the colors

you'd choose, big enough for all your busy

wheeled fleet to live inside. And should

the map some day shrink

to less than the size of a bed, its boundaries prove

to have no more strength than the soft foods and cultured

milk you loved, turning to liquid if stirred,

once, at least, you will know Taliesin's World

if not the center of all centers was where

it should have been, in the place where the grandfather

clocks made music and time was always for.

 

 

 

Comments

[GHD Australia]

let bygones be bygones **