If you give a child a shovel,
and they attempt to dig to china
(you end up with a cacophony
of mothers screaming at the sight of their gardens.)
but the child that made it
remembers
layers of sediment and mud
the old shoulder bone
the red patent leather shoe
the rusted coins and copper
the ways the layers of earth became the rings of a tree,
bloated with age
the way the stones moaned their stories
i'm for an art of peeling layers
of collecting fragments
of images linked like rosary beads
i'm for an art of distilling moments
of drawing the waltz of humans on earth
the art of women finding in their reflections
the faces of their children and grandparents
the warrior who stands on the battlefield
to feel the wounds of the other soldiers
i'm for an art that seeks the surface
moves beyond the artifice
joins the dance
and gives another child a shovel