"Watching Fog Roll Off The Shack At Toad Hall Pond"

Watching Fog Roll Off The Shack At Toad Hall Pond


This white-picket life once was dangerous:
snow caves in winter, quicksand in summer.
Nothing in this world was sacred.
 

I ran away through backwoods, through nettles
and poison oak, scrabbled over barbed wire.
This American life once was dangerous;
 

it took my every immunity to rush the Brahman
in the field. Now I walk as though on clover.
Nothing in this world can be sacred.
 

Each of my children is a dandelion clock.
I foreknow their sail over this river in the sky.
This white-picket life once was dangerous
 

before such letting go, such letting slip
the cordage that bound me to any of my beloved.
Nothing in this world could be sacred,
 

not spring, not fall, the rouge of any Roman dusk.
This white-picket life once was dangerous
although it was a gross, disintegrating menagerie.
Nothing in this life is sacred.