Place to Place
By Myles Gordon

for Julius David Gordon
born April 24, 1998

When you were born your mother let you go,
a tender package placed two months ago
for destinations she would never know.

The Holy Stories: scatterings of seeds,
a baby in a basket in the reeds,
mothers who can't fulfill their infants' needs,

and you, already passed from place to place
in whirlwinds of each stranger's voice and face
in first impressions nothing will erase

each passage from each unfamiliar hand,
the scattering of seeds upon the land
no one but you will ever understand:

a past lived through but never left behind.
May your new parents let your past remind
them always to be gentle, patient, kind.