Bruce McRae
Happy Birthday to Us
I arrived mid-century.
A flaw in the seamed dimensions.
A stone dropped down a cistern.
Already ancient, wonderstruck,
fire in my gills and hair, life-naked.
I was born all of a sudden.
A shift in the given paradigm.
A handheld globe of teeth and fur
standing athwart of all of history.
A faint itch, a rudimentary element,
I appeared as if quite by accident.
A figure blurred by the side of the road,
an eleventh planet, a tiger’s teardrop,
a snowman in the parson’s orchard.
Heavy with dreams, I was awoken
early for my rough appointment.
A manic isotope in a fat-lit cavern.
One of those molecular contrivances
you hear so much about.
A mighty atom. A coy abstraction.
Other work by Bruce McRae