Poetry

A Child’s Impulse

a poem

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Persimmon on the gradient, I wish it
well, to roll, to tumble, to settle somewhere
like a flat tire people pass all year
and wonder as they climb the mountain
what small disaster left it there, discarded.

I’m the small disaster, grinning. But
now there’s the question of where my snack
has gotten off to, and why can’t I just
hold onto things, and whether this trip
up the hiking trail is worth the headache for

the price of sweat (or the trouble for the cost
it buries). I can’t fathom these eternal questions
reproaching me, not now, at least.
Let them hang in the air as imposing patterns,
the beginning of something grand and terrible.