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My child is sitting cross-legged on the floor reading to herself. Sometimes she is so full of need I push her to the floor. Only once I did that and I don’t even remember the moment right, but I was trying to wipe urine off my leg and she was naughty like a squirrel and jumping and singing and her head slammed into my chin, which hurt and even more than that, it pissed me off, because she’s my beautiful child, but in that button snap of a moment she was suddenly just one more person and I pushed her away in a way that felt to me like setting her down, but awkwardly, because of how she was also balancing her feet on my feet as I tried to pour out a bowl of pee from her little potty as a toothbrush dangled foaming from my mouth. Somewhere in the mess of that morning she’d become person enough to, in the space between us, create force of momentum, and then I did not set her down, but pushed her and she fell away from it against the wall and was crying because I, her mommy, pushed her. And I know this should be the poem about how I’m horrified at myself, the poem about what in ourselves we have to live with, but in that moment which followed two years of breastfeeding and baby-wearing and sixty-nine hours of natural childbirth and the hemorrhaging and the uncertain operation, after which I pumped every two hours, careful not to let the cord tangle in the IV. Even then when she cried and no matter what and no matter and no matter and no matter and no matter what, I held her all night if she cried so she would not ever know someday you’ll cry alone, but I held her and ached and leaked and bled too as long as it took. Of course there’ve been nights since but sometimes it feels as if I’ve never been asleep again, so when I say I pushed my two-year-old against a wall and I don’t remember it happening that way but it happened and I did and I’ve been wondering a long time now what the limit is and when I would find the end of myself, and that day, which was yesterday, was the end. And this day, when we played hide-and-seek with Daddy, and touched bugs, and read Frog and Toad Are Friends twice together before she read it to herself as I wrote this, this is the day that comes after.

That afternoon the dream of the toads rang through the elms by Little River and affected the thoughts of men, though they were not conscious that they heard it. --Henry Thoreau The dream of toads: we rarely credit what we consider lesser life with emotions big as ours, but we are easily distracted, abstracted. People sit nibbling before television's flicker watching ghosts chase balls and each other while the skunk is out risking grisly death to cross the highway to mate; while the fox scales the wire fence where it knows the shotgun lurks to taste the sweet blood of a hen. Birds are greedy little bombs bursting to give voice to appetite. I had a cat who died of love. Dogs trail their masters across con- tinents. We are far too busy to be starkly simple in passion. We will never dream the intense wet spring lust of the toads.

Illimitable happiness, But grief for our white heads. We love the long watches of the night, the red candle. It would be difficult to have too much of meeting, Let us not be in hurry to talk of separation. But because the Heaven River will sink, We had better empty the wine-cups. To-morrow, at bright dawn, the world’s business will entangle us. We brush away our tears, We go—East and West.

Dedicated to the Women Here’s to the men! Since Adam’s time They’ve always been the same; Whenever anything goes wrong, The woman is to blame. From early morn to late at night, The men fault-finders are; They blame us if they oversleep, Or if they miss a car. They blame us if, beneath the bed, Their collar buttons roll; They blame us if the fire is out Or if there is no coal. They blame us if they cut themselves While shaving, and they swear That we’re to blame if they decide To go upon a tear. Here’s to the men, the perfect men! Who never are at fault; They blame us if they chance to get The pepper for the salt. They blame us if their business fails, Or back a losing horse; And when it rains on holidays The fault is ours, of course. They blame us when they fall in love, And when they married get; Likewise they blame us when they’re sick, And when they fall in debt. For everything that crisscross goes They say we are to blame; But, after all, here’s to the men, We love them just the same!

I am a careful marshmallow toaster, a patient marshmallow roaster, turning my stick oh-so-slowly, taking my time, checking often. This is art--- a time of serious reflection as my pillowed confection slowly reaches golden perfection. My brother grabs ‘em with grubby hands shoves ‘em on the stick burns ‘em to a crisp cools ‘em off flicks soot eats quick. I’m still turning my stick. He’s already eaten six.

From a story of how the tobacco plant came to our people, told to me by my cousin George Coser Jr. It was way back, before there was a way back When time threaded earth and sky. Children were conceived, were born, grew, and walked tall In what we now call a day. There must have been two suns, a bright moon, somehow We had more light than now, sheen Of falling in love playing about Earth’s body In a wild flicker which lit Us up. We who were this planet and yearned for touch. Every planted thought grew plant Ladders to the stars, way back, before there was No way back,Miss Mary Mack. We used to sing along the buttons of her Dress. Our babies are always Our babies. Even back then when time waved through The corn. We knew our plants like Relatives. Their stories were our stories, there Were songs for everything — I Should say “are” songs for every transformation They link between way back and Now, the forever now, a time when a young Mvskoke man and woman Walked through the shimmer of the early evening. They had become as one song. They lay down when it was dark. I can hear their Intimate low-voice talking. How they tease one another with such gut love. Earth makes a bed, with pillow Mounds. And it is there as the night insects sing They conceived their first child. They Will look back as they walk East toward the sunrise. The raw stalks of beginning Will drink the light, root deeply dark into earth. In the tracks of their loving The plant-child emerges, first the seed head, then Leafy, long male body and the white female Flowers of tobacco, or Hece, as the people called it when it called To them.Come here. We were brought To you from those who love you. We will help you.

I Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find! I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind; But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind! II Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings. What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings, Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings? III Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by . . . what you call . . . Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival: I was never out of England—it's as if I saw it all. IV Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May? Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day, When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say? V Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,— On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed, O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head? VI Well, and it was graceful of them—they'd break talk off and afford —She, to bite her mask's black velvet—he, to finger on his sword, While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord? VII What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh, Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—"Must we die?" Those commiserating sevenths—"Life might last! we can but try! VIII "Were you happy?" —"Yes."—"And are you still as happy?"—"Yes. And you?" —"Then, more kisses!"—"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?" Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to! IX So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say! "Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay! "I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!" X Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one, Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone, Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun. XI But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve, While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve, In you come with your cold music till I creep thro' every nerve. XII Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned: "Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned. "The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned. XIII "Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology, "Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree; "Butterflies may dread extinction,—you'll not die, it cannot be! XIV "As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop, "Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop: "What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop? XV "Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

So here hath been dawning Another blue Day: Think wilt thou let it Slip useless away. Out of Eternity This new Day is born; Into Eternity, At night, will return. Behold it aforetime No eye ever did: So soon it forever From all eyes is hid. Here hath been dawning Another blue Day: Think wilt thou let it Slip useless away.

If ever there were a spring day so perfect, so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze that it made you want to throw open all the windows in the house and unlatch the door to the canary's cage, indeed, rip the little door from its jamb, a day when the cool brick paths and the garden bursting with peonies seemed so etched in sunlight that you felt like taking a hammer to the glass paperweight on the living room end table, releasing the inhabitants from their snow-covered cottage so they could walk out, holding hands and squinting into this larger dome of blue and white, well, today is just that kind of day.

Today the sun rose, as it used to do When its mission was to shine on you. Since in unrelenting dark you're gone, What now can be the purpose of  the sun?