Growing the Bonsai Lake
Awoke and found the world a lake Alone with mother and mealworms And what was left of the rust That rose and fell and rose and fell With a tide who ate everything but me. We were connecting pipes to make Large islands to beach ourselves against until the tide corroded them away And we would float again. There were tollbooths, Bright orange buoyed markers, and tallies kept with paper and greasy charcoal. I checked for my Shakespeare professor Who, on all accounts was there With his wife floating on metal chairs. Suddenly, my mother was not inside I was afraid that she had died And left me over this red water To build islands for all the floaters Too busy with their sunscreen With their colored styrofoam. My mother, I could not find her. A short blonde woman appeared A muscle in a shell Plucked herself from a small cave and as she did so Her brain livered out into the open A small piece of her brain held out, itself a liver So bleeding she sat down to die This blonde woman was my mother But was not my mother. Awoke and found the world a lake.