Questions Like These

Questions Like These

(“A discussion started among them about who would be the greatest.” Luke 9:46)

Questions like these cause the world to stop spinning
and laugh like onions in a chocolate milkshake.
They are misguided missiles,
thought-bombs that explode far from
the source of every noun, every verb,
every proclamation complete with non-sequiturs
and slovenly rhetoric.

Give me children who wave at me,
neighborhood pets who run to me,
eagles ignoring me,
and breezes that barely whisper the names
that have
gone before me.

The strongest among us find their bones
becoming brittle eventually.
The few on the pyramid above us
find their breath thick and cannot spare
a single respiration. Inevitably.

Look inside my cedar chest, a few blankets,
mildewed clothing, chipped teacups and saucers.
We keep mementos because we could not keep
our ancestors alive. And two more generations,
maybe three, maybe all,
the keepsakes will crumble to dust, the wind
changing their course from owned to loam hundreds
of miles from here.

Give me a baby crying in the night,
give me the mother nursing the child,
give me the father walking the floor,
give me the make-believe that should
never die.

Questions like this keep our fists closed,
grasping rods of iron,
clenching thrones of power.
Set a child before me, let their eyes
loosen my hold on unearned titles.

Let me learn the lessons of upturned faces lifted
toward the sun.