Be the brown bear and the honeybee,
the finch and the squirrel
both too picky for this birdseed.
Be the real train rattling
past the clenched model trains,
and be those too, damp,
printed with small-hand sweat.
Be the anglerfish with its dark
relationship to light, and be
the shadow puppet duck
who lives along the ceiling.
Be the pine needles and
keep calling them “hay.”
Be a new vowel, an open one.
In the whorls of your hair
be an impossible map, and in
following that map be
a detour into a coconut grove.
Be the lion and the whip,
the icicle and crunch of winter
grass underfoot. Be louder.
Be the rod and the spoils.
Be the bucket of hairs and
the shirt that grows and grows.
Or be a grown mule hauling
your mother and me down
a cliffside gravel path, and be
the canyon backdrop
we ignore. Be the cracked
spine and the uncut pages.
Be two rogue daisies and
the merciful gardener.
After the bath be the schooner
dry docked in a flamingo blanket,
gaff-rigged like a pirate
and slick of foot, laughing,
kicking, laughing. And after
the rains be the water strider
grown too fat to stand above
the surface tension of the puddle,
little predator, indiscriminate
feeder ours. Be the temple,
and be the apostate. Be the legs
like bamboo in their visible
growth, and be the favorite
pants, worried to comfort,
their thin knees presenting
each thread. Be the curved
slide and the mulched tires
waiting like earth at the end.
From where in your elbow
I pulled you apart, be
resilient, be the gorilla
slipping your tears quickly
into laughter, and from that
laughter be the doctor
who snaps your tendons into place.
Be all these arms, their presence
like the net around a trampoline.
Be the apple, and be yourself
eating it in the shopping cart.
Be the door with no house
around it, and be the air
slowly nudging it open.
Be the sycamore of Berryman
and the sycamore of Wells,
strangers embracing
through a mirror. Be the city
bus and the school bus.
Be the sun’s difficult salutation
and our squints into it. Be
an orange rind thrown at highway
speeds from the passenger
window, glowing in the snow,
and be the orange-vested
convict stabbing it like trash.
Be the sitcom and the lonely
critic, the genuine laughter
looped to a lie. Be honest
as a kitten, and be the kitten’s
unpracticed claws. Be
apricot trees and bracken,
be blackberries and bromine,
our messy, mathematical world.
Be the dried paint left like a scab
on a borrowed shirt, and be
the friend who never mentioned it.
Be the lamb and the wire’s barb.
Be each brick, and be the building.
When the vase begins to crack,
be the eye that prefers it, a lover
of wobble. Be a voice for no heifer
and no priest, but the unseen town
they left behind. And be the voice
that calls that town into being.
My son, be the praise song
pushed at the impossible sky. Be
still as an old couch and be still
beside me. My son, be
forever. Be small forever.