The March Of Human Progress Seemed Mainly

But The Last One: The Baby Who Trails Her Scent Like A Flag Of Surrender Through Your Life When There Will Be No More Coming After - Oh, That's Love By A Different Name. She Is The Babe You Hold In Your Arms For An Hour After She's Gone To Sleep. If You Put Her Down In The Crib, She Might Wake Up Changed And Fly Away. So Instead You Rock My The Window, Drinking The Light From Her Skin, Breathing Her Exhaled Dreams. Your Heart Bays To The Double Crescent Moons Of Closed Lashes On Her Cheeks. She's The One You Can't Put Down.

For Time And Eternity There Have Been Fathers Like Nathan Who Simply Can See No Way To Have A Daughter But To Own Her Like A Plot Of Land. To Work Her, Plow Her Under, Rain Down A Dreadful Poison Upon Her. Miraculously, It Causes These Girls To Grow. They Elongate On The Pale Slender Stalks Of Their Longing, Like Sunflowers With Heavy Heads. You Can Shield Them With Your Body And Soul, Trying To Absorb That Awful Rain, But They'll Still Move Toward Him. Without Cease They'll Bend To His Light.

It Feels Strange To Me To Be Living In A Box, Hiding From The Steadying Influence Of The Moon; Wearing The Hide Of A Cow, Which Is Supposed To Be Dyed To Match God-knows-what, On My Feet; Making Promises Over The Telephone About Things I Will Do At A Precise Hour Next Year.

To People Who Think Of Themselves As God's Houseguests, American Enterprise Must Seem Arrogant Beyond Belief. Or Stupid. A Nation Of Amnesiacs, Proceeding As If There Were No Other Day But Today. Assuming The Land Could Also Forget What Had Been Done To It.

Thanks For This Day, For All Birds Safe In Their Nests, For Whatever This Is, For Life.