May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
I watched Rebel Without a Cause on TV late one college night when I learned …
You’ve untangled yourself from my hair,
floating behind me on one very thin strand.
So I loose you to the early air, not wanting teething
or sleepless nights, hoping you’ll find your way
at a young age. So—little enthusiast, full
of possibilities—don’t die. Photosynthesize.
Grow your own green leaf or several. Bleed
oxygen for my breathing. Absorb my CO2:
together we may balance the atmosphere.
Drop a seed into the humus of told thoughts.
Offer a nipple for a neighbor’s thirst
or a flake of desert manna with a honey sweetness.
Oh, small particulate of the mind, why not
turn to lightning in a bug that signals, Stop. Go.
Start a blaze hot as fatwood. Fling
a glitter of ash over the ocean, pocking it like rain.
Ignite a burning bush. Transfix the universe. Then,
having found a mind of your own, come home.
Burrow my brain. Be one of a neuron couplet
that breeds a host of your own kind.
Luci Shaw
Luci Shaw is a poet, essayist, teacher, and Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver. Widely anthologized, her writing has appeared in Image, Weavings, Books & Culture, the Christian Century, Relief, Rock & Sling, Ruminate, Radix, Crux, the Southern Review, Stonework, The Other Journal, Nimble Spirit, and others. Harvesting Fog, her thirtieth book, was released in 2010. For further information visit www.lucishaw.com.