The Day You Were Born (poem)

The Day You Were Born

Cock an ear, your master’s voice, drip or pebble

Distracting drumbeat, or is it heads-up

Heads-up, Dodge Ball

You can be the smart one, saw this coming

When the world was blind

You can find yourself at the center of a bridge

A rope bridge, working itself untwined

A cliff’s edge lined in plastic palm trees

Studio TV’s safari-jacketed jungle yarn

Canceled soon

The firehose typhoon, swinger, you

whipping up it’s gonna flip you, then you’ll fall

You’ve come this far

And just to gain her admiration

She in the sarong, the village princess

who brought you here and urged you forward

You can’t go back

Are you not hearing that lilting call

It’s hard to tell, the fans keep blowing

Is that the medicine man’s voice as well

saying my son it’s no farther now to stay the course

than turn again

Twisted this way, your mind insists keep going

Only an ankle between the coils

Heroes finish what they’ve started

She believed in me…I, the Lion-Hearted

I forget. He won’t come out himself

But strong is my faith he has a reason

Even that, I think he mentioned

In his lecture

I can’t afford exposure, he’d said to me

We need help to make our Way strong

Sharp eyes and small men

Committed

Were you not dying for your country the day you were born

The Day You Were Born
Episodes

The Lab-Grown Brain Makes a Prose Poem

(2017, Stephanie Foster)