francEyE

Someone
jumps on your bones
& shocks you from dream.
You yell. You laugh, he
laughs too, you try
to hug but he’s gone, you call
“Thank you!” to his heels. His mother
says that is no way to wake Grandma; you
must be gentle, but she does not know
what a blessing it is
to be shocked awake like that, to wake
laughing. There is that moment
when the dream is gone and
there’s nothing in waking
to take its place; waking alone
or slowly has become
the time of slow dawning dread
of more of yesterday’s aches, but
waking to laugh is a different dawn.
What can you call it? There is no way
to manufacture it, it
just has to happen. You’re jumped on,
you scream, you laugh, you try to
hug and you thank and by now
you’re ready for
everything, never mind
yesterday’s aches. At night,
sorrow returns with questions—did I
scold my child when she was young for
doing what I now thank her son for? I wonder
why I didn’t beg her
to jump on my bones in the morning the way
her son does now. No. Then
I didn’t want to wake at all. And there’s
all that sorrow, all that
regret, but
maybe
I could ask her
when she has to wake me in the morning
to jump on me just like that. She’s not
too heavy, nothing is too
heavy for a
morning miracle. Not even
regret.