a little poetry

We Did Not Make Ourselves
by Michael Dickman


We did not make ourselves is one thing

I keep singing into my hands

while falling

asleep



for just a second



before I have to get up and turn on all the lights in the house, one after the

other, like opening an Advent calendar



My brain opening

the chemical miracles in my brain

switching on



I can hear



dogs barking

some trees

last stars



You think you’ll be missed

it won’t last long

I promise





I’m not dead but I am

standing very still

in the back yard

staring up at the maple

thirty years ago

a tiny kid waiting on the ground

alone in heaven

in the world

in white sneakers



I’m having a good time humming along to everything I can still remember

back there



How we’re born



Made to look up at everything we didn’t make



We didn’t

make grass, mosquitoes

or breast cancer



We didn’t make yellow jackets



or sunlight



either





I didn’t make my brain

but I’m helping

to finish it



Carefully stacking up everything I made next to everything I ruined in broad

daylight in bright

brainlight



This morning I killed a fly

and didn’t lie down

next to the body

like we’re supposed to



We’re supposed to



Soon I’m going to wake up



Dogs

Trees

Stars



There is only this world and this world



What a relief

created



over and over

my friend turned me on to the michael dickman's poetry and i am in love. this poem is beautifully nostalgic and wonderfully melancholy. it makes me cry. this evokes the feeling of childhood for me and the sense of enormous potential, waiting to be fulfilled. i do not think that we frail humans can ever live up to that wonder of what the world holds and all that we might one day become. it is that loss that i am mourning.