New Jersey 28, or New Draft

Creator

Adam, do you remember our last
lesson in the garden?
I was teaching you how to distinguish
the weeds from the flowers, kneeling
over you in the dirt, watching your
face as you tugged
each stray plant from the ground.
You pulled with fists so gentle,
lips pressed hard into stillness,
as though I’d set you to the task
of tearing babies from their mothers’ arms.

Don’t you think
I know the pain of separation?

When I ask myself which part was the hardest,
I remember the day I drew the line
between ocean and sky,
how I couldn’t keep my hands
from shaking when I lifted
South America out of Africa’s arms
and carried her across the water,
while she sobbed into my shoulder.
I still can’t watch the tide
as she rises towards the beckoning moon,
wishing only to hold her one more time.

When I was finished, my unconvinced eyes
took in the strange, unfamiliar world before me.
I told myself:

it was good, it was good, it was…good?
My first real creation was that lie.

This world is fault lines
and gouged bodies
of water,
the scars of things torn and ripped
like your weeds.

I couldn’t tell you this here.
This was the one place I thought
I’d done it perfectly. Every flower,
every tree, every stone was for you,
even before I knew you.

You were an accident.
An unintended result
of an unexpected pleasure.

After five miserable days,
I was ready to quit, but some angel
dropped clay in my hands, like
an invitation to play. So I did.

While my hands worked
and collected thick coats of cracking clay,
I began to think the way potters do,
asking, “What can you hold?”

I kneaded poetry into your veins.
It was as vital as the beat I pounded into your heart,
and the tongue I molded into your mouth.
The only separations were your fingers.

I tried to teach you: you too, are a creator.
I wedged responsibility between your shoulders. ,
taught you to make distinctions,
to give names,
to pull weeds from flowers,
but you learned to cry for the weeds on your own.

I didn’t teach you to make things grow.

How did you know not to interfere
with the primordial love of mountains?

It’s taken me so long to realize
how much I missed our lessons in the garden,
and I have no right to your forgiveness, but

I offer you this: you were right about the weeds.