In the time it took to write that poem, 
I could have torn down a wall,
stapled in fiberglass insulation, nailed
up sheetrock, taped and spackled, 
primed, painted, selected and hung up
a collection of paintings.

I could have raised a chicken, wrung 
its neck, gutted and plucked it,
chopped it and the onions and carrots,
browned, stirred, simmered, driven out 
to buy the wine, uncorked it, set
the table, lit the candles, opened the door
to our friends, dined, talked, laughed,
seen them out and collapsed,
cleaned up the kitchen,
recovered enough to make love,
made love, and slept eight hours.

Thank goodness I didn't have to write it 
all at one sitting. Oh, no, it came and went like 
malaria. For days or years I was perfectly well,
and then without warning fevered 
with stumbling line breaks, shaky metaphors,
the fog of delirium. A vision of words
I loved. Their remembered smell.

Stone in my shoe, berry seed 
lodged between tooth and gum, 
sometimes I wanted only to be rid
of you. Pregnancy dragging on and on,
now that you breathe, I can see you whole.
Now I forget my labor and want 
another and another.

Colors were hard, and later, arithmetic even 
worse, fractions a puzzle you could not master.
You claimed your hair was blue
and, at age six, gathered the trilling 
seventeen-year locusts for your neighbor, 
a boy barely older than you, who took them 
apart to see what made them click. 
How then could you put the world back 
together?  Blue hyacinth, yellow daffodil—
at last you could color their silky scent 
so others would trust your naming. 
Black Chrysler, white wedding cake 
building where laws were made, white 
monuments domed and needled, colored 
music, your skin that Crayola called “flesh.”

You played in the alley and found a cat 
with one blue eye, one brown. White skin
and black and so many shades between,
divisions and fractions you could not name,
but the neighborhoods colored inside the lines.

One summer, taken to see the monuments,
what did you find but a marble fountain 
where black and brown children splashed,
calling to tourists on the landing above,
“More pennies” and one bolder, “Throw dimes,
more dimes.”  Sticky with sweat, you eyed
the tumbling children, tumbling coins.
Capital girl, how could you make it add up?
                        

This sphere that swivels in the socket
of my shoulder bears the mark of its fracture,
mended now, quicker than muscles and tendons
much more tender, which took months
to release their pain and move as I wished.
How I had to stretch, lift, strain, pressing 
them back into service while the bone
made itself whole without my will.

Yet the thumb, no longer opposable, 
stuck out as if to flag down a car.
As all else healed, I could not regain 
my hold on the world, learned how little 
I could grasp without that one locked digit.

No doctor could give a firm prognosis,
what was wrong, what could be done.
Perhaps a tendon (one I “didn’t need”)
from my forearm, removed and inserted 
along the thumb? I cringed at the thought 
of the blade, the wound, another recovery.
Then, like a gradual thaw, this release, 
at first barely noticed—an okay sign, 
a claw, a grip on a glass or ball. 
And just so was I forgiven.