Child of Morality

Do my eyes flash red but in the sun?
Does honey drip into print from the slit of my tongue?
Cornered by you, lecturing or leaning in,
I would squirm not like worms
Turning over and over the sod,
But like a child chidden
By our gentle reproach.

Sometimes I am nothing more than a guilty conscience
Cautious and aware of wearing a groove
Threatening a rut, as I run
Through corridors of thought and possibility
Only,
          over and over. Call me
                                             more-than-a-friend.
I’ll admit I love you; then,
Scuttling backwards I’ll turn my head to say,
“That is all. That is all.
I have rolled our questions into a ball.”¹

The moral high ground is an easy retreat—
A worn groove, a paved and blackened street
Made level by the souls of many soiled, yellow feet.²
A womb from which decisions
Easily are made.

By crawling out backward, feet-first,
I may find myself (who am lost)
Feet touching the ground
Before I even know where I am going.

Then, while still within,
Seeing where my head is headed,
I’ll crawl back in again.
An accidental, indecisive puritan,

“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”
The proof lies in the afterbirth of my morality.

¹"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T.S. Eliot
²"Preludes", T.S. Eliot

5/26/98