The Birds & The Boys
When I was ten years old and ready
to mother something. I thought
I only wanted to birth boys,
that I would be good at water
fights & tree forts; I knew how
to play in the dirt. Always wanted
a skateboard & a slingshot—
not to aim at the birds. I would
have raised gentle boys
with coarse ropes of hair & window-
ledge eyes, poet boys, dreamers,
living together like thunder in sunshine.
I have never received anything
I admitted to wanting aloud.
As if the devil were listening, or god
thought lack could teach me
a lesson: perhaps humility
or how to keep my heart to myself;
children should be seen
& unheard—dreams we believe
will define us, build our identity,
as if the earth were each dandelion
& patch of red clover sprouting
from her surface, as if we become
what we create. God cannot answer
everyone’s prayers, & maybe some of those
prayers are selfish or shallow—too foolish
for anyone to support, especially god.
What You Could Learn from This
Don’t fall in love with a body;
bodies don’t tell the truth.
They are unpredictable, unreliable.
You will think you know
every delicious inch of skin
only to discover a new scar
shimmering like lakeshore foam
at the receding hairline,
thinning tissue behind knees
or in the bend of elbows—
blood vessels branching violet
broken blooms, a dark spot
in the white of an eye
you had already memorized.
The body lies. And suddenly
you wake beside a perfect stranger
vaguely like your lover. Your palms
will pat and probe for familiar hand-
holds, landmarks, your favorite
birthmark just below the beltline,
and you will be abandoned.
Find something deeper to love:
the patient rise and fall of a
sleeping chest, so innocently
trusting in the next breath.
Beyond muscle and bone, gently
disintegrating, blown away by years,
long instead for the marrow—mold it, like putty
pressed to fit the shape of your mouth.
Elizabeth Rae Bullmer's most recent chapbook, Skipping Stones on the River Styx, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She is a licensed massage and sound therapist, in Kalamazoo, MI.