Saying yes to no and yes to yes to
the baby boy so many times a day
it’s like a people’s protest chant gone non-
electric harboring a claim belonged
to everyone who cares, we care, we crawl
outside and spy more life to point and yes
at with a name. What do you call the fence
around a tree? Who is the life you seek
when indexing the noon moon’s matte navel,
gray and nervous, and tell her wait for night?
To mother is a power ever to be
repeating, peat-cut to provide a weight
of burnable goods by eons replaced,
a turf, a moniker, another yes.
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From The Decadent Movement by Laura Kolbe. Copyright © 2026. Available from University of Pittsburgh Press.
