‘Well, of course: who wants to be born?’
––Hannah Sullivan, Three Poems

and having been castaway (different 
to being thrown
out of the light) by a wind 

though what truly these days
is the difference when the body 
is, law-like, always involved, when

the scatteredness grief 
makes of devotion lies before you 
like a stupid adjective rolling 

the grass: inevitable 
is the way any swinging thing 
finds rest: (as in what we ought 

to do after being fought 
into parenthood; what 
we leave behind) at the bottom–– 

the helicopter’s aftermath 
a violent fire-dream hollowing 
out the seen through to space behind

the eye
like a tattoo. My mother 
forbade us to bring 

any permanent mark
to our skin––son; 
ever-unfolding crack 

in the wall. My mother
had dreams, I think, 
with grace and aplomb

is how I stole them––