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Spring
2005
Giving the Stars
Names
Barry Ballard
~~~~~~~~~~
Yet
someone had loved him . . . But for her, the race of the world would
have trampled him under foot.
- James Joyce
On the love of his mother
At eighteen and still
growing, the mother
needs assistance lifting
her mentally
handicapped child from
his wheelchair. He
was shaken violently
seventeen years
ago by his baby sitter
until
his mind shut everything
off, and his heart
shattered against its
cage. That's when the stars
were counted and given
names, when the will
to let him live said,
"These are the billions
of ways to temper and
alter." Her fear, inert
(like the idea of motherhood
knotted
in her throat) for
all the empty space from one
Sun to another, for
the abandoned Earth,
for the shadow still
clinging to her wingspread.
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