Two Men & a Truck

Once, I was as large

as any living creature could be.

I could lift the world and carry it

from my breast to its bath.

When I looked down from the sky

you could see the love in my eye:

“Oh, tiny world, if anything

ever happened to you, I would die.”

And I said, “No!” to the hand. Snatched

the pebble from the mouth, fished it out

and told the world it would choke!

Warned the world over & over! “Do

you hear me? Do you want to choke?!”

But how was the world to know

what the truth might be? Perhaps

For, clearly, there were other gods.

The world could see

that I, too, was at the mercy of something.

Sure, I could point to the sky

and say its name, but I couldn’t make it change.

Some days it was blue, true, but others

were ruined by its gray:

“I’m sorry, little world —

no picnic, no parade, no swimming pool today ... ”

And the skinned knee in spite of me.

And why else would there be

It’s her weakness ... Now I see!

But, once, I was larger

than any other being —

larger, perhaps, than any being

had any right to be.

Because, of course, eventually, the world

grew larger, and larger, until it could lift

me up and put me down anywhere

it pleased. Until, finally, I would need

its help to move the bird bath, the book-

shelf, the filing cabinet. “And

could you put my desk by the window, sweetie?”

A truck, two men, one of them my son, and

everything I ever owned, and they

didn’t even want to stop for lunch.

Even the freezer. Even the piano.

(“You can have it if you can move it.”)

But, once, I swear, I was ... And now

this trunk in the attic to prove it:

These shoes in the palm of my hand?

You used to wear them on your feet.

This blanket the size of a hand towel?

I used to wrap it around you sleeping

in my arms like this. See? This

is how small the world used to be when

everything else in the world was me.