The way we came in

We Enter This World

wings up and all the doors
removed from their hinges.
No one asks how we got
such sturdy legs even as
cane futures tick upward.

The things we know harden
and glaze as the will to
discover what worries the
curtain softens to stain
as bath suds. Hips clack
with the hitch in our walk
as the prosthetic soul we
claim as our own will not
survive another washing.



We enter this world to gain
and lose everything, just
as every other thing does.
The harried crow will not
feast on robin’s eggs this
morning as we will later
lie, our burdens laid out
on the pillow beside us,
when the sun runs nails-
out down a hurt wall of
dusk unable to hang on
one moment longer.

Just once to arrive without
the rain asking anything of
us. To leave a print of sand
that might run off back to
an old sea that left it im-
precise so long ago, its wet
window vexed and ajar,
exactly the way we came in.

Joseph Gallo
May 14, 2009