What of the neighborhood homes awash
In a silver light, of children hunched in the bushes,
Watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender,
Signs that the irregular pleasures of moving
From day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty,
Have run their course? Oh parents, confess
To your little ones the night is a long way off
And your taste for the mundane grows, tell them
Your worship of household chores has barely
begun;
Describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms
and mops;
Say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do,
That one thing leads to another, which leads to
another;
Explain that you live between two great darks, the
first
With an ending, the second without one, that the
luckiest
Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur
Of hours and days, months and years, and...