When You Knew
At five, you weren’t sure you were separate from your brother. Your mother’s needle-roughened fingers pricked you briefly on your cheek. You responded when her hand smoothed your twin’s hair. The boys, she called you. On the first day of school, when the teacher summoned Rudolph, you never looked up. You waited to hear the boys. Your first born was a girl child shining at first with unlikenesses, tiny barrettes and your wife’s blue eyes. It took him five years to match your triumph. By then your daughter’s laugh was yours. You watched the cousins slipping in and out of the lakewater, golden glistening fish, almost sisters, then running onto shore, making for different destinations.
Their feet leave sand prints
in opposite directions.
That is when you know.
Chicken Vision
Whether penned or loose, a chicken knows the fears of prey. Over generations, she has been honed to a master of anxiety. Her interior sight conjures the nose of the fox, the shine of the axe. Her external eyes function independently, each on its own side. One is near-sighted and the other far, while her head bobs to focus her gaze on what is essential. To inspect the looming sky and treacherous earth. Her predator must approach from behind or with great speed. The concentric circles of her eye lie within her wise wrinkles. No predator develops this wisdom and determination. After she lays her brood, the gold of her iris dims as chicks demand payment to be imagined into being, to learn that life is too risky to examine.
That meditation,
dangerous occupation,
is a luxury
Luanne Castle loves writing poetry especially haiku and haibun