The Absurd World

Wasn’t I made for you, I say,
what was I made for, I say,
the earth is made and molten, what
was it made for. How many words
have we written to make it mean
something, get busy living or
life is what happens. I don’t want
to train our children to work, don’t want
to gift the world purpose or voice, make
something of yourself. There is a road,
or there is not a road. Flowers come back
or they do not. Our son clomps down the stairs
in the morning and it sounds like our daughter,
could be anyone. I want, and it is made
in me, that want and fear. And if we are made
in the image of something, that fear
is eternal and purposeful. Fuck
the maker of fear. That maker
is like any leader with a plan to teach
by taking away. Is like every other great
head of state, sends the bodies down or away,
sends the mothers into the fields. Turns on
the light in their own little room, signs
my life. Resigns. How often I have looked
at the sky with a sort of stilted wonder. I am
made in what image: cloud, startled deer—
And the people who write sure words, those
straight eager platitudes like do good, be good,
live, words written on graves and on walls, on little
tin signs stuck into grass, on lockets worn around the neck,
tattooed in cursive on the wrist. Let them.
Let them. Let me. Tell me I’m made for this,
for you with your hand on my belly saying this
is so much like the entire universe. I am a maker, too,
have pushed something into the light to watch
what it might do.

Sara Moore Wagner is the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award, and the author of the chapbooks Tumbling After (forthcoming from Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022) and Hooked Through (2017). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals including Beloit Poetry Journal, Rhino, Third Coast, Poet Lore, Waxwing, The Cincinnati Review, and Nimrod, among others. She has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart prize, and Best of the Net. Find her at www.saramoorewagner.com.