Coping Well II

I don’t want to be told I’m doing a good job

in labor: what my body is doing is

against will

against reason

what my body is doing

is a trainwreck of an idea,

for which I deserve as much credit as

beating my heart.

Complimenting labor always seems

condescending, a strange distraction:

how should I respond?

And in this massive state of indignity,

to think of a polite response

only reminds me

how impolite this state of almost-born.

If I could help “doing well” –

to will or unwill it—

what would that even mean?

Withhold the prisoner on the verge of

making a break for it?

Hardly a prudent plan.

On the other hand,

if I could grant him clemency,

release these prison doors,

distribute personal effects,

I’d be glad to help:

sign the papers,

look the other way…

But I am neither

guard nor bailiff:

I am the earth he tunnels through,

part of nature in this moment,

part of quaking,

part of being

not choosing,

nothing moral,

no act of the will.

Only being broken,

being stormed,

being flooded,

engulfed,

separated.

Say I’m coping well.

Only

Only at sunrise and sunset do I

Think of him. Only at the color of the sky

Or smell of hazelnut in coffee

Only when reading Huckleberry Finn

Or teaching multiplication.

Only if I wake at night unsleeping

And find a child awake

And make a sandwich and play a game

Instead of watching old westerns.

Only if I have to carry sleeping children to their beds from mine

(A thing that hardly ever happens)

Only if I smell the beach or cooking meat

Or hear the stars and have to shush a chatter-child.

Only then and when I think of places that we’ve been,

But those are roads I’ll never drive,

And I stay indoors at night.