¾

Certainly not as complex as math, and much simpler
than metaphor. Just something visual and comprehensible
and somewhat circular, like a pie from childhood
and how we had wanted it so badly, loving the challenge
a sister or brother posed, everything in favor of
that youthful right to the bigger share.

We call it greed every so often, getting old,
watching children fight over some silly object.
Common competition, we say, and how back then
we should always win. But how hard can it be
to let go of the transgressions? Even now
we are remembering our own incompleteness,

knowing at last that there’s so much the universe
still owes us: quarter moons and acute angles and just
too much sea. So we smile at the children
building sandcastles along the edges of water,
impatient for their own coming of age.
We coax them into the water oh so gently,

we would seem almost innocent. Now we are waiting
for them to call to us, to discuss with us sciences
and fractions and the deep and vast oceans of the world,
the insignificant domains of land and how to swim,
to love the fair and the unbroken sun above.
If only to fill them in on things, if only to get even.