I Beat With My Dragonwings

 

I beat with my dragonwings against my earthmother asking why?
Why didn’t you teach me, show me the locked-away gardens,
Draw me the map I have cried for, hand me the burning key?

I wander the forking skyways diving for summerfat answers
Every fledgling more skillful than I, every toddler wiser,
Every kindergarten full of mockery at know-nothing me

Unpaged, half-hearing, the wind runs straight through me, 
The worldflames knock me this way and that
The lightning makes me dance a wilding

And yet–and yet. I spear the questions one way
And the answerflowers bloom in the opposite place.
I frustrate the angryhours hot, cold, and they temper

I hammer the doors of tell me, tell me, tell me
And they melt into whispers of why then? why?
And they rustle back: Just look at yourself!

Which I can’t, which I can’t, which I can’t.

I beat with my puny hands against my great, solid mother
Asking why? And she says nothing at all, but builds me
Yet one more pair of soaring, unreachable dragonwings. 




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