Better or Worse

Daily, the kindergarteners

passed my porch. I loved

their likeness and variety,

their selves in line like little

monosyllables, but huggable—

I wasn't meant

to grab them, ever,

up into actual besmooches or down

into grubbiest tumbles, my lot was not

to have them, in the flesh.

Was it better or worse to let

their lovability go by untouched, and just

watch over their river of ever-

inbraiding relations? I wouldn't

mother them or teach. We couldn't be

each other's others; maybe,

at removes, each other's each.

II.

Each toddler had a hand-hold on

a loop of rope, designed to haul

the whole school onward

in the sidewalk stream—

like pickerel through freshets,

at the pull of something else's will, the children

spun and bobbled, three years old and four

(or were they little drunken Buddhas,

buoyant, plump?). They looked

now to the right, now to the sky, and now

toward nothing (nothing was too small)—

they followed a thread of destination,

chain of command, order of actual rope that led

to what? Who knew?

For here and now in one child's eye there was a yellow truck,

and in another's was a burning star; but from my own perspective,

overhead, adult, where trucks and suns had lost their luster,

they were one whole baby-rush toward

a target, toward the law

of targets, fledge

in the wake of an arrowhead;

a bull's-eye bloomed, a red

eight-sided sign. What

did I wish them?

Nothing I foresaw.

Source: Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (Wesleyan University Press, 1994)