What does Charlie want?
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Oh, the unfairness of being myself.
There ought to be a rule.
So many days as a little boy, so many days as a deer, a centipede, a Masai warrior, a wealthy old lady
with too many rings, on an ocean liner.
And as a blacksnake, a woman with cold red hands hanging laundry, a boy picking dried corn out of
the dust, a thirsty fox.
Myself even, or especially, on a good day: unfair, unexplained.
I want to be God, only without His mailbag.
Just an instant to see the plan from His mountain.
Then I could lie down satisfied in my reasons.
Because this world I am in is not the world.
And never will be more than my racing-away circumstance, my rain barrel.
Filled by the weather that happens here and leaking into the soil where the man of the house set it
down.