Gone Home

Let's face it. The stars are unkempt,
flung across sky
(in joy, I think)
and landed soft,
rather than gambled.

O to trust the world's terrain and tackle
the way sky itself was trusted
when it was blank enough
to become blanket.

I know I wasn't thinking much--
but now that my stars are thrown,
fear like a bacteria, fear like a mother
births a new man out of an old, killed man.

That nothing fatherly in me wants to trust,
perfectly, means I risk entire
landscapes, right, means horizon's gambled . . .

I don't know and I'm
at the door and don't know
what's behind -- let's let go now:
this kind of forgetting is a form of building sky.

Then the children tumbling toward me away.