Dad, says the boy
in another room,
How do you get
bad thoughts
out of your head?
The answer
I can’t hear.
*
Once his dad leaves
I snuggle with the boy.
Mom, he says,
the rainbow has touched
everywhere on earth.
*
I say, Yes.
And he says,
We think the sun
only follows us,
but it’s up there
in the sky
for everyone.
Yes.
*
And from there,
he leaps to the stars,
wonders if
we could break one,
maybe with a chisel.
I don’t know.
*
And Mom,
if Earth and a star
crashed,
would we still be here?
No. But the stuff
of our bodies comes back.
*
So you could come back
as a boy and me a girl?
Maybe.
And you could have ten armpits
and I could have none?
*
I don’t know
is the only answer
that seems true.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I don’t know, O
I don’t know.
*
Mom! Talking
took the bad thoughts
out of my head!
Dad was wrong.
He said,
Pour cold water
on your head.
*
In another room
the boy sleeps.
His song is at work in me,
how with curiosity
we open.
How,
I don’t know.
(Note: It turns out Finn made up the part about what his dad said, and boy did he laugh at his own joke …)
That’s a great dialogue poem. I’m particularly fond of how you weave the “I don’t know” from boy to speaker to the ending. And the child talk is so poetic, though you probably just had to take dictation. How to get bad thoughts out of the head, I’ll have to remember this one.