In My Daughter's Room

Our house-shaped space-craft spiraled earthward.
I felt like Dorothy.
Just after re-entry
The loudmouth member of the crew
Ganked the only parachute and Geronimoed,
Leaving us two
Tail-spinning. Irony was
The parachute was not a parachute,
But one of those weather balloons you never
See anymore,
That used to bob in the stratosphere
Like tin-foil diadems,

Never getting anywhere,
But with a great ocean-view,
Until finally something gives
And a farmer finds it
Strewn across his hog-lot.
The house-craft touched down
Safely in a bed of flame.
The farthest away
I?ve ever been
Is inside my own home.
My daughter?s room.
Today.

I think black holes are just plastic
Garbage bags blowing down the midnight highway
That is the Universe.
There aren?t as many dimensions as we thought.
A black hole can disappear anything that nears it.
We all know that.
The farthest away I?ve ever been is in my own home,
Finally cleaning out my daughter?s room
So another little girl can live here.
The black plastic bag I held in my hand
Was infinitely capacious.
I mean I could throw anything in there.

It was a black hole,
The Universe?s way of cleaning up.
Just to prove its ability,
I threw in a horse.
Not a toy horse, a real one
Named Too Cute to Shoot, a dressage champion.
Then, for good measure, I threw in another horse.
This one was Whiskey River, the best ranch horse ever.
Then I threw in the sun.
Then a pair of angel wings
And a magic wand
That was supposed to bring

Good luck.
It?s junk.
All the small clothes are in the attic,
Should anyone ever have another daughter.
I threw away a notebook that was blank
Except for the first page
That had the beginning of a Shakespeare sonnet:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds/ Admit.
The whole poem is writ
In lipstick on the window,
And though I could have, I didn?t throw
Away any windows. I threw away the satin pillow

That bore a golden ring up the stairway to the castle,
Some old Cosmos. The cosmos.
The jaws of life. The passage of time,
The eternal present,
I threw away a year in Italy.
Sixteen summers in Wyoming. The garden.
A porcelain unicorn. Then I was done.
I stood in the middle of my daughter?s swirling room,
The black bag in one hand,
And in the other a small glass horse from Murano,
A piece of tourist kitsch,
Which I kept, and keep.