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Early Things
When I was born I forgot the plasma cradle,
forgot the in-keepers daughter
who had suckled lips with pints of brewed chyme,
forgot the liquid yoke of the now unknown.
When I was born
the light was in other people’s eyes.
My father was faceless,
my mother the only tree in the forest.
Her warm lodging hands lifting to coddle
spills of milky thirsts into mew-shaped narrows.
When only a dim cask of sight
I began to wink the world into shapes
I buzzed and gurgled like bee in a drain.
I howled inside a germinal brain.
Skintight I bloomed around a query of flesh.
Early things showed up to crowd my eyes,
back-lit beings leaned over a bar of sound,
spoke in suds and froth.
Later --- who can tell
when ‘later’ becomes a thing?
I saw through a bat-winged door
daylight from night,
colors stampeded in to beg a drink.
Early things,
the green of leaf and lawn,
red and yellow plastic shakers
mouthed to sooth raw and runty wonders.
Incomprehensible snow on a wet nose.
Then that light-box of undeveloped things
fell apart only to come together.
I saw the faceless changing,
and where a garb of perception
fell to a fitting room floor
there I was
an early thing blinking and being.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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