Truck

Carrington MacDuffie

 

NEARLY BORN

 

The father was attenuated and as impenetrably delicate as ever.

The mother’s hair was the path of the uncertainty

principle.  Her eyes are like emeralds,

then they are like eyes again.

Her smile hitches us up into the summer

night, where crickets call out in satisfaction.

Little days.

We’ve all had to travel.

The child will emerge glossy with questions, new hair slick

with the passage, into this art

happening.

 

If society is a work the performance

or collage artist might

destoy at any moment, then the long moment

we look into each other’s eyes is what moves

beneath the little days like an unexpected

stream.

The child will arise from it, wet.

 

The new mother and father are dancing to the band

and then we all lay ourselves down

in deference to the power

of our own desires, and to how far

we had to travel just to feel them all over, all over again.

Simon says Call out a fragment of the whole,

Simon says Lie down,

and in our horizontal imitation

a new child will arise from us,

and we’ll be bowing

to the unimaginable.  

 

 

Carrington MacDuffie’s poetry was most recently collected in Many Things Invisible, an award-winning audiobook of music, found sound, and spoken word, available on iTunes. She served as poetry editor of the journal Square Lake out of Seattle, and her book of poetry, On the Dreaming Earth, was published by Subaqueous Press. She makes her living as a voice actor, and most enjoys bringing poetry into her music, and music into her poetry.