East as in Love and What I Couldn’t Say
The sun rises in the east, I tell you
Because you are learning how to navigate.
It was easy to feel like the goddess of water in the desert
When you swam in my belly– a nearly revealed secret
And this week a student bemoans the use of couplets—
I think she hasn’t been in love and change the subject.
When I talk about you to my classes it is as an example
Of all that is good but at home I have to temper my pride
Because you are at some sort of apex—muscle and future gleaming
A grasp of privilege and an even deeper awareness of obligation.
You take the wheel, how proud I am when you turn the volume down
The silence irritates you, I know. You ask for a story.
As a graduate student, I mentioned you in my writing
One man said, “Oh god, I’m so sick of mother poems.”
What he failed to understand is how you
Are every poem. Ever.
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