Whim - Caitlin Etherton

Whim

for Paul Muldoon

After debating just which mammal

I should make the Son of God,

making lists of qualities like lyric, detailed, broad,

I give up. I’ve no capacity for writing like Muldoon.

If this is whim, then this is whim.

This is caprice. This is my doom.

It’s time for me to haul my own murky mine-water,

to be the very windlass of the truth

that’s in my veins, to weave my own

textile, crease the skin, so tight the reins

of my own movement – an improvement on

the two that you left waiting, waiting, waiting

for a future, the two you stopped in lovely, dark and deep

when you, like Theseus, just climbed off the back and walked away.