Extrication                             

As then, thinking only of escape,
it seemed, trapped, tethered
either to house, the demon of
elusive sleep, to walls, to a
suckling insatiable babe --
like some animal circling its
homefires of steel, everyone
seeing, but somehow missing
the feign, the faint.  Consider
Bradbury's unhappy heroine
setting out, determined, and,
loosed like this, losing her moorings
in a dizzying world, and then Sexton,
shredding her seams once casting off
persons, routine – careening, compassless,
  -- and my own small freedom --
to name my last child anything,
no dead left to elegize --
appropriating nothing but sumptuous
sound -- oh, the release in that, until
it floated like a helmeted man
on a broken rope, turning and tumbling
in slow someraults,
relinquished to stars and darkness.
So it becomes clear why I'm here
in the thick of it, the thin being
so stunningly wide.

Julie K. Shavin 2 2010