Paid By Weight

Someday
Maybe ten, maybe twenty years from now
There will be a knock at your door
There will be a man standing there with a clipboard
And you will sign your name on the dotted line
And the man will hand over
A parcel bundled up in wool
You will look down to consider it
You will look up to say thanks
And the man will be gone

But a plaintive cry will draw your eyes
To a baby pelican
Sitting on your welcome mat
And the pelican's eyes will dilate
And the eyes of the trees will dilate
And you will be a sea anemone
You will contract upon this contact

Will you feel small?
And will you feel scared?
And will you gasp for air
And find there's nothing there
But a fatal mistake? Ah
Will you finally weigh what you have given
Against what
You take and you take and you take and you take

Somehow
You will think once again of the package in your hands
You will begin to tug at the wool
It will come off easily in pieces
But it will cut right through the prints upon your fingers and
It will pile up around you in a mountain of gauze
In a car on a hospital train
Where the surgeons lack credentials
And the scalpels are just saws

But a plaintive cry will draw your eyes
To a baby pelican
Sitting on your welcome mat
And the pelican's eyes will dilate
And the eyes of the trees will dilate
And you will be a sea anemone
You will contract upon this contact

Will you open your arms
To the birds?
Will you open your arms
To the trees?
Will you repast them
With your own blood?
Will you finally give back
The breath that you take
And you take and you take and you take
You take and you take and you take and you take

Somewhere
Underneath the many years of stinging fibers
You will find your gift
Will you ever understand what it means?