Goddess

I love a bare world like the world I strode with my boy.
I held his hand. I said, "This is a wall of wind." I pitched

the words over the wall, but the wind-whirr deafened him.
His walk was a wrestle. The wan sky was his twin.

His father beckoned him to the swings
and the world grew barer. My son's love is a burden,

the Oedipal beat, beat, beat of his fist on his
father's tee-shirted chest. I see

that his leaving will repeat itself; I will let him leave.
And I love a bare world.

Once my husband declared me a goddess
of destruction. I approved of that view. I view

myself that way, too: Queen of an Uninhabited Planet.
I tread on moon-rubble. Dust circles my knees.

My dress is Belgian deconstructionist. I am barefoot and regal
and unadorned but for the anklet from the morgue.

I am mother to all that is bare, all that is gone
for I have expected the bare world all along.

Copyright © 2006 Kathryn Maris All rights reserved
from Cimarron Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission