From inside a wooden crate under our mobile home

I’d look through the sandy darkness

at the spider webs that never had spiders in them

and wonder where they were.

But I think the real reason I was under there

was because I was trying to gather some protection.

I decided darkness loved me because it never hurt me.

Which was a marriage that followed me into my teens

where eventually life got a little more unpredictable.

I’d leave the earth in a single thought,

and magically stop cruelty in the world.

I believed you had to abandon your attachments to be safe.

And things have only gotten more wonderfully uncomfortable from there.

The truth is, I prefer being an undefined thing.

Now I’m invisible and scattered and nobody’s son.

But somehow I’m still here, loving occasionally,

working in a school with other lost children

who don’t yet know it’s important to be alone,

or that happiness doesn’t have to go on the fridge under a magnet,

in order to be felt,

and at the risk of sounding somewhat defensive,

I’m glad to be something as elusive as the sky.

But I think it takes time to feel good about that.