What do you want to be when you grow up?
And the answers for a large pink boy were:
fireman, policeman, truck driver.
I wanted to be the papier-mâché bank I could never quite finish,
to hold the vanishing treasure that was
my mother’s life.
What do you want to do at college?
And the answers for a quiet, studious, large pink boy were:
football, women, fast cars, science.
I wanted to become David Hume and make
the world real in the understanding of the senses.
I wanted the blond god who came to my dorm room
for night tutoring to stay
until morning.
What will you do with your life?
And there were no more fences to clang against,
only an incredible brightness, like June itself announcing:
do not forget the soft-handed child yearning
for the life you are hurtling through.