Inside me, still,
lurks the baby who could walk
but chose not to
(wanting instead to stand up,
hands grasping the rail
of what they called a play-pen)
and to watch. It seems
I was born wary
and passively resistant.
And that's who I stayed.
In the 17th month, I walked
because, having watched them,
I noted that they
seemed to want me to walk.
Inside me, I don't
contain multitudes,
and Walt Whitman can
go fuck himself. Inside me
there's the DNA of a woman
living in Africa
160,000 years ago:
it's inside you, too.
And then inside there there's
a few people who worked like dogs
but not as hard as slaves. Maybe
a failed preacher, certainly
a Skid Row drunk, and possibly
the funniest patient in what
they called a mental ward.
Inside me, I think it's
population: 12. Or so.
But no apostles. In there,
an old non-descript tree
finally gives up, accepts
a lightning-smash, explodes,
and falls. Deer, squirrels,
owls, a cougar, a bear,
and maybe some hiker with
a bandana tied around
dirty hair mark
the arboreal collapse,
but, god damn it,
there's never a Zen monk
around when you need one.
And Walt Whitman
can go fuck himself.
Inside me, there's
a startling, a chronic
mild terror--maybe because
at month 15 or so,
I learned from informed
intuition that very little
in this life-thing makes sense.
hans ostrom 2015
