Paid By Weight

Someday,
Maybe ten, maybe twenty years from now,
There will be a knock at your door.
There will be a man standing there with a clipboard.
And you will sign your name on the dotted line.
The man will hand over
A parcel bundled up in wool.
You will look down to consider it;
You will look up to say thanks,
And the man will be gone...

But a plaintive cry will draw your eyes
To a baby pelican
Sitting on your welcome mat,
And the pelican’s eyes will dilate,
And the eyes of the trees will dilate,
And you will be a sea anemone:
You will contract upon this contact.

Will you feel small?
And will you feel scared?
And will you gasp for air
And find there’s nothing there
But a fatal mistake?
Will you finally weigh what you have given
Against what
You take and you take and you take.

Somehow,
You will think once again of the package in your hands
You will begin to tug at the wool.
It will come off easily in pieces,
But it will cut right through the prints upon your fingers and
It will pile up around you in a mountain of gauze
In a car on a hospital train,
Where the surgeons lack credentials
And the scalpels are just saws.

But a plaintive cry will draw your eyes
To a baby pelican
Sitting on your welcome mat,
And the pelican’s eyes will dilate,
And the eyes of the trees will dilate,
And you will be a sea anemone:
You will contract upon this contact.

Will you open your arms
To the birds?
Will you open your arms
To the trees?
Will you repast them
With your own blood?
Will you finally give back
The breath that you take?
(and you take and you take and you take.
You take and you take and you take and you take.)

Somewhere,
Underneath the many years of stinging fibers,
You will find your gift.
Will you ever understand what it means?