The Mother of All
is here again, wind-hearted
woman, no harpy, just an average
woman and therefore
extraordinary to the average man

who has no sense of the tides
or the moon, who sees a world
as struggle and chains laid out
to catch him and hold him until
he is taken to the shore and drowned.

The Mother of All
doesn’t care about the average man.
She sees the careworn face and touches
his near-dead eyes, but her proper role
is engaged when she shows him

that there is nothing
he feels that is not felt by the others
who walk the streets as careworn and dead inside
as he. In isolation is the true death of the world,
she tells him.

The Mother of All
turns him back toward the clutter of his room
and leaves him alone again but outside the sound
of the streets compels him to turn back to the window
and listen: the whining lawnmowers, the children

screaming for what they want, the mothers
who stoop to care for them, the men who laugh
at jokes shared with other men who stand on the sidewalk
even though no one man knows any of the others,
passing each other on the narrow streets is enough to connect them.

He yearns for one more push from the Mother of All
to show him that he can join all of this too:
the laughter, the humor, even the wanting that the children
feel. It has been so long since he last wanted something
that strongly. It has been so long since anyone

stepped to him and bent to hear his needs.
The breeze picks up and his window crashes down suddenly
and someone turns to see what has happened. A man on the sidewalk
waves at him and laughs at his startled face.
A cumbia starts up on a porch across the way.

He waves back,
moves to the door and
turns the knob.