and what, Mama?
You turned me inside out
so red, so dark, a cave…

an old sock wooly
on the outside,
and yet hollow
and full of things
yet held…

and yet the holder
of a galaxy of galaxies!

You took my emptiness
and filled me with Yours
which aches with the pregnant
potentiality of it all.

what am I gunna do
with this new ache
You gave me?

You reach
and grant that grace,
that terrifying removal
of veil and valence and vector…
and this new and bracing ache
remaining behind like
a lost tooth in my
heart’s mouth.

I went to that mat of death
alone and yet surrounded
to discover that pile of me,
I bone of my own bone…

what gain was there?
what loss endured?

my mouth stoppered
my eyes covered
ah but ears so open-wide
to hear the death song sung
so slow and yet so steady
tock-ticking its way round

that twisty path to me
laid there like a circle…
my big-hand little-hand me