This is a mystery

though I think I’ve figured it out,
or at least the part about clouds,
because when I was young, I’d lie
on the neighbour’s uncut backyard
lawn, gaze at them whipped meringue
by polka winds and track rainstorms
take five giant steps through suburban
Waterloo, without saying, ‘May I’.

And doors – they were everywhere,
always needing to be locked, to be
checked and to be guarded against
my friends, to be the line between
a lost universe, that I was taught had
greater relevance than the parade
of events happening to me.

The confused comment about love –
well, that’s always been a component
of my daydreams, to arguments, to raging
against the machine of what it takes
to be the perfect fit for someone else’s
dreams – as though I couldn’t and still
can’t dream anything for myself.

I wrote the poem in the kitchen,
on my laptop, with a glass of wine
beside me, but what I wrote –
those words have been a swirling
parrot of events on my right shoulder
since I was eight or ten.