trailing mum's loving gaze

brutus
augustus staint-gaudens

trailing mum’s loving gaze

snow on the shoulders

of forming and unforming

clouds, taking the slow

train though without any delay

will be falling tomorrow

The first time you stand to turn away

to walk all on your own, baby, how maybe

the aid of a couch or coffee

table to shore up balance but then to let go

of the cushion or the edges, that’s the first

act of letting go, isn’t it, the way a new

umbilical is cut and sizzles and dies off like a bug

in a frosted ceiling globe, but it’s really not

your hands that have to let go to make it

real or even official—it’s the gaze that needs to break

free from it all, and for you it must’ve been then

that the weather began

to change for good and forever, it was

as if you were moving to a new home

in another country, never mind you didn’t know

the language and couldn’t dress

for the weather, or ever

rely on, ever again, the hands

that instinctually reached out when you fell

because all toddlers fall, it’s the only way

any of us learn how to walk isn’t it, and though it’s not far

and it’s mostly painless, maybe what you remember

most about it, or your body at least—

is that it was always solid and it wasn’t a long way

down.  Breaking it off

at the edge though, looking out into the sky or down

the driveway to watch (when you were able to,

when you got your first pair

of glasses--) I wonder if you were shaken

at the way it went on and on without

end, and looking was especially easy

after the snow and before the plows arrived

to push it all aside how your eyes could skip

down the lane on top of all that white and make it

out, how you’d finally let go of needing anything

of her approval, all wordless, that sort of NO—

and I bet if there were a way

to record the sound of this rent, it wouldn’t be all that

different than the holy of holies being torn

                was it top to bottom bottom to top?

                and that god box naked now

                and thieves and thunder are a long way off still

                and for a while it doesn’t hurt at all

                                (maybe that’s what being stunned really means,

                                the shock comes without pain

                                but with surprise instead

                                the way you may realize you had something

                                valuable the very moment it’s taken from you)

how looking away and not looking back

for ages and ages across all that snow and cold

and stepping out into it naked on your own

                and wanting to! finally wanting to!!

to only stumble out (you’d imagined it for so long)

the way a dungeon prisoner would

and raising your hands and arms to defend yourself

from the brightest one in the yard

the one that burns, you feel the scar still even

today at the tips where it was

ripped where it shriveled and lay

kicked with a dust and small stones burial

losing all it’s holy mum's loving gaze.