“It’s what’s inside the shell that matters,
And it’s alright if readers play with shells.” — Czeslaw Milosz

My bounds were drawn in pleasant places
where my father called me out.

Running while he worked I was free to imagine
my way across infinite worlds, out of breath

at those lines inscribed for me:
the cut of the creek, the bank of

the river, the fallen fence shown to me
as to Job: I was the tide, the sea

to whom Father said, “This far
you may come and no further.”

Of course I confounded my landscape,
testing the pitch of his voice and patience

making him transgress what he’d inscribed
to scoop me up and place me back beside him.

But how much room there was for this
explorer of mysteries to be forgiven.