In therapy, I lay my cards on the table:

ace of briefcases and reverse hermit, jack

of all trades, queen of wind-up dolls.

I play a tornado, a Garbage Pail Kid, 

the five of cups. I am still trying to change.

 

When I started this work, I thought the well

willed themselves stable, pulling whatever

their edges were toward a middle or a mean,

that they’d learned to solve for averages.

 

I wanted what was average, too. I figured

I could split the difference, that halfway

between the self who did not want to wake

or wash and the one who over-functioned

there must be a middle-aged woman

in jeans, getting on with what was.

 

But a mother who rages because it’s all

too much—famine and swimming lessons,

bees dying, her boys checking

each others’ necks for ticks—and the child

who cries because nothing is enough—

neither art nor protests—cannot come

to any entente, death being proof for both. 

 

Because the mother is right and the child is right.

A hermit cannot take a queen or a tornado

an ace. I am still trying to change. Listen,

 

between what is diametrical there is a field

of rhubarb growing so fervently that it creaks,

and to preserve its sweetness, farmers harvest it

in no more than moon- or candlelight.