If you are anything like I am
and I have faith that you are
then you have already stepped
out of your body
and been irrevocably wounded
I was born in 1969
Chances are you were born
during a different year
It doesn’t matter if you were born
three thousand years ago
or if you are born
three thousand years from now
we share what it means to live
Maybe you have gone
back into your body
and found words
the only guide
into the known dark
We are both the living and the dead
the stuff beyond theory
Sometimes it is too much
and other times not enough
We wake to a morning fog
We wake to morning sun
We sit in a cold evening
thinking of the death of a parent
A different evening
has us thinking of our eyes
and how they crawled
out of our minds
at some point
in the evolution of the self
It is the evening of the first day
of a new year
I ask myself What have you done
The list is remarkable
From Birches. Copyright © 2019 by Carl Adamshick. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Four Way Books.