Clamor

Life has kept asking me 
to give, and I have given.

But what did I give 
that may have harmed another?

I never desired praise: 
just wanted happiness as much

as anyone else. I admire 
those who know how to fold and unfold

a sheet of paper, revealing
painted scenes that morph from one 

thing into another. A magic 
lantern, an infinite grid. Life

is the hand that washes 
the foreground in a spill of blue

then skips rocks 
across a lake. Should a bridge

vanish or a mountainside erode,
I must refrain from thinking of it

as a personal message from the universe.
It's not because I ate dark

instead of white meat, or stared 
at the moon while incubating 

life in my womb. Though life is also
that which we slap across the soles

of its feet as it comes through
the portal, to get it howling.