Guilty Knowledge
Clown, give me your red rubber nose that I may squeeze it.
This is not a child’s dilemma: strange footsteps thump
and we feel more alive than we do in winter.
Little electric lights fall
onto our piñata. I remember
what I wanted to ask my mother
before she rode off on a sticky bronze horse — I never heard
her words, but guessed the size of her happiness,
her power to confuse.
From the back, she’s an evergreen
who sees the lilies wilt, sunflowers drop
their seeds and droop,
rocks the size of horses disappear in a single night.
From the front, she’s stalking the weekend.
Her coins darken in her palm.
I have one eye for what I’m following, another for the path it takes.
No one but me sees their glowing tracks.
James Cushing
from Solace