GATE by Grayson Wolf

               Before I’m born, I’m in no hurry to be born. So I arrive 
unhurried. A shape in the trees. Weighted, a fishing-line pinching 
                             the water’s surface. A voice like the moon, wordless
               but listening. I grow gold, then, slick as a raindrop, red 
as a hen in a doorway rent by daylight. I arrive early. I arrive
                              laughing—an inside joke—a belly-laugh 
               inside my mother’s belly, laughing 
and laughing.
                              A dog disappearing into a snow-pile, an elephant 
               discovering the ocean. I come to full-grown 
with a child’s body, asking: who are you to tell me I’m not a bird? 
                             I look (so they say) the way any baby looks. 
               The way my grandfather, quiet as a lamppost, looks 
five floors down from the hospital window
                             moments before I’m born and just in time to witness 
               his blue Toyota stolen and slipping up 7th street. 
Like a train to its uncoupled caboose, I’m born 
                             no good at math but here’s Buster Keaton’s sad eyes 
               as his hat drifts down the Seine. I’m the hat 
the train the caboose. 
                             The coal going in the smoke coming out. 
               I’m lifting the ties behind me, running ahead and laying them down 
different. A mill raising the river up in pieces until the same old
                              same old, electrifies the village. I lean
               -in, hunch-over, a jockey at the start-gate.
Horse-tremble. Ear-strain. Like a hammer 
                             coming down on a nail—Bang! I’m out 
               and into the hands of strangers, gamblers, horse-thieves. (You know,
“family.”) They lift and look me over. I look 
                             at them, they look at me (it seems 
               like the thing to do). When they untie me 
from the mother I was, I arrive asymmetrical and out 
                             of sync. Odd as an em-dash 
               in the river of things. Like rain. A sudden breeze. Like blood 
dappling the clear-veined light of an IV. When I wake
                             I wake as a building wakes, one
               window at a time into the unfinished evening. I wake
as my grandfather does, partway
                              through the night, newly widowed, reciting
               to no one but the ceiling: ‘I went to school,
I got a job, I met my wife…
                              ‘I went … I got … I met …’ 
               I come to in the middle of a shift and thinking 
only of sleep, work the whole way through.