A Birthday Wish

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A Birthday Wish



*6/15/2020


I think I learned to think this year,

if thinking were denoted as 'emerging

understanding of an inability to go 

on sleeping in certainty,' and as the globe

went gimping for another turn around


the room, I too approached the kind

of sniffing canine intellect that circles

but will not recline. It's something like 

somnambulists discovering they're not

awake, a virgin's realization of an itch


that won’t be scratched a while yet,

but strangely I am here to ask you not

divide the frothy sea or even point

a beeline through the desert if this is not

the year. Instead, I'd ask at 26 you help 


me learn to camp around the tabernacle 

covered in the cloud, content to pitch my tent

in holy ambiguity and maybe even rest

a bit—just please don't let this little nap

become, as it can often do, a full-on sleep.

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