I.

The silver willow no man had planted bloomed the night of her birth.
It was her grandmother who died between contractions, an accident
of old tissue and cartilege slipping softly, bringing the basin down
from her daughter's room. Her first words: Dolorum. First prank?
Tying a two pound bullfrog to the kitchen ceiling's light string
one dark and quiet night, and then shrieking, from under the table,
after her mother's initial fright. Her first menses occured at eight;
the second appeared at twelve. School was adequate; boys, less so.
How it happened then, is perhaps too banal to relate, and yet:
A blindman's dog growled; a dozen cats followed; two doves fell dead
at her feet, in a dream far more real than waking, and so she stayed
in a realm not her cancer, nor ours, would touch, after much work.
The black willow she tends to, does not weep, but burning, wires about.


II.

The closest farmer slaughtered his oldest Holstein within seconds
of her first breath. Her father will later say he had argued for Charity,
but found compromise, seduced by an afterbirth kiss. One teacher notes:
Clarity's refusal to focus upon any one task as a task ineluctable
is of paramount joy, tantamount to vexation. At sixteen, her Ode
to Melancholy simply catalogues drugs both pre- and proscribed
to then sum going street price. She twice fellates a tattoo artiste
for the portrayal of a coral snake, sans black but for eye and tail,
aswim and lifesize upon collarbone. What made her turn, so exactly,
may not be understood even if told, and yet: There came an autumn
day of August she witnessed a woman pushed into traffic by her child,
a boy more sprite than demon, destroyed before her eyes. The driver
whispered prayers, and held the mother's hands; she restrained the boy.


III.

There was a storm when you were born; the earth was dry until after.
Recognition that you practiced masturbation while still in diapers
occured at six or seven; which one, you are uncertain. You once told
the grassy gulley wood every green shade was loved; this, a curse
that gained momentum, intended for that first lover-cum-enemy, unmailed
and burned in the basement sink instead. Books, television, music
and computers: Lines, lines, lines that lead you nowhere, providing
clue as to what to do, should you ever arrive. You talk of God to God,
guessing He or She (or yes, It) is to be cajoled from scalar corners
with promises of self. What will change you, even you don't know
but for the gravity of death, and yet, and still: this morning,
your body respired slowly, a spider crawled along your inner thigh,
you dreamt of water, and you gloried as you stretched yourself out.