SUNSHINE: THE POET AT 4

SUNSHINE

gather up all the sunshine in the room
& put it in a bowl
& put it outside on the deck
you can cut the sunshine in two
& have two bowls full
& you could take off the lid
& let the sunshine out any time you want
What if the bowl had a hole in it?
would it burn a hole in the floor?
If you took sunshine out in a bucket
could you cut it in half?
& give them sun?
then I'll hammer it back again
The moon never gets cut in half
it's the sun that's white
it's white, and it's little.

1/1980
Fort Bragg, Mendocino

 (a found poem of sorts: I was writing on Pat & Betty Wall's deck in Fort Bragg, and Micaela Carr's four-year-old son, Mateo, came over to tell me all about the sun. So I wrote it down. Sometimes you have to be ready to reassemble the parts.  It's written on 1/1/1980 but I'm not positive of the date. I remember it was a warm day, so the date surprises me.)