Middle Child

Middle Child

Was nearing the bottom of a long page,
so into the writing that I was writing,
I didn’t know how I came to it so fast.

And when the last word of the last line
was in the middle of a long sentence,
I ripped to the next page without thinking.

Little did I know, at least at the time,
that I had skipped an entire page—
left it there,      blank,      forgotten—

How lonely that empty page must have felt,
how ripped off and undeserving its plight,
sitting there ignored, all by itself.

Of course, it can’t blame me for my accident.
It blames God, the omnipotent,
cruelly aligning the universe coldly,

he purposefully caused me to skip the first step,
to skip the licking of my long dry fingers,
only to torture the lonely white page.

And yet weeks later I have to hope that this page
will grasp its place and know its position,
and perceive its chance for unique contribution.

For that blankness—
such an appealing blankness—
speaks so spaciously,

with power in its impotence—
inviting me . . . some weeks later, to ponder it
so much longer than I have the pages prior and after.

And I wonder if I shouldn’t a picture depict,
or write a long poem in red ink upon it.
And yet I, the hand of God, leave it alone,

blank and beautiful, to behold its place!
It’s here.  It’s now, it’s ready, somehow.