Autobiography

This one has been languishing for a while, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So here it is...


I was born where the earth meets the sky,
I was born in the land where it all began.
I was born as stars fell from heaven
and burned the ground in a history of man.

I grew up on mattresses underground
while adults deciphered
the whiz of bombshells above.
Heavy artillery was just another snow day.

And then the fire died
and the phoenix rose from the ashes—
or so they liked to say.

But my ghosts were elsewhere
conjuring a life for me to possess,
a spread of white and street signs.

I am here now in the shadow of the green
where I trade words for family.
I am here chasing a dream that
died long before it began.

Straddling the ocean like the Colossus of Rhodes,
a foot in each heart,
looking down at what’s in between.

It is there that I find my reflection
in the water that swallowed
cities and men.