Lines Composed upon Changing a Diaper

Marian upstairs is anxious for an update

from the extended care facility

where her husband is dying.

Four blue macaws bustle through

the airspace above the neighborhood.

Her footfalls go cursing from room to room.

Here, the toddler testifies,

“Noooo poops!”

But the toddler is lying.

I tell him there are nine spiders living inside

the walls for every person in a building.

They spin their twilit colonies

in an alternate dimension rippling

beneath the drywall.

Termites romancing in the joists.

We worry about so much

more than ourselves, I tell him.

But, I tell him, it’ll all be alright,

because it’ll all be alright,

though not all of us will live long enough to agree.

One night, we hear Marian’s husband has broken

back into himself through a skylight in his own mind

demanding to see his wife again, demanding

the nurses release him again,

demanding a Rueben from a diner

in Brooklyn that folded in ’96,

but by morning, he’s ghosted

back into his framework.

From the exterior view, your birth

is exactly as inevitable as your death.

I know not the schematics of why, baby,

but I remain devoted to my task,

wiping you clean, buttoning you up,

answering your every complaint

with a grammar you can’t understand.