Losing Everything

I used to think God

I used to think My Parents

I used to think Gravity and Destiny and 1985 Saab 900

I used to think accuracy and storytelling and My Parents

and Love as pre-destined as Rain 

and I used to think that 

but Today my mom ate her afternoon cheese in the yellow recliner and told me the truth

which I appreciated 


She keeps tubs of toys and Shit 

as my Dad calls it in the garage

and I am glad she does because that’s where the Calvin and Hobbes books are

Calvin and Hobbes careening down the most 

precipistic, fantastical hill suspended in the air saying something like

this is fun, isn’t it Hobbes

how falling and flying and hurting yourself so badly you wish you were not in fact human but a stuffed animal

is more true to Life than any of the stories we write and move around our mouths

over and over again until we believe

My Parents

their love

it got stuck in my head like a splinter


my Mom says that what my Dad needed to learn was how to sit in her fire

my Dad takes me to Home Depot to find a spark plug for the lawnmower that broke while I was mowing lawns for my brother’s lawn-mowing business

I never learn anything at Home Depot,

I just wander around and pretend like I know why Aisle 34 directly abuts Aisle 2 and no, I don’t need any help I actually know exactly what I am doing,

but I never learn what the spark plug is connected to

I never learn in my mom’s story what is going to make their marriage work for the rest of their lives.


God was slow to invent gravity.

So for a long time we were all just floating,

which helped traffic,

but was a disaster for gardeners and lovers and people who wanted to touch the earth,

a disaster for bakers and chefs and cake-makers.

So many people need to be tethered to the road and the floor and each other.


D is so good at making cakes beautiful and she tells 

me it has to be an effortless beauty, you can’t try too hard

You can’t try too hard I thought today while trying very hard to make the cake beautiful.

Love and gravity should feel effortless I say while rolling over the Earth.

I am convincing myself of something, but remember please, that I am a seed and the most I could possibly become is a tree:


not a Parent or even a Book in a Garage or not even the capital g in Gravity and certainly not a City

at most I am a tree in a city of full of trees 

and at least

I am a seed posing as a poem, 

burying my face in the Earth and thinking grow, please Grow.