CALL ME BELOVED

Some months after the 9/11 attacks
a small Maasai tribe in Kenya
donated fourteen cows to the United States.
Grief speaks all languages, crosses all borders;
the Maasai elder said, “The handkerchief we give
to people to wipe their tears with is a cow.”
And so, fourteen cows sent with ceremony –

  “To the people of America
  With compassion
  From the Maasai”

Somewhat related, I’m struggling
with self-worth – not
particularly helpful
with chores, or bills –
another liability, just
more dead weight
in the war against the million,
tiny bloody cuts of the day-to-day,

  so

I’m offering poems.
And my time, for what it’s worth –
even if I’m all limbs, gangly
and mostly in the way,

offering them like Maasai
will gather fourteen cows –
worth everything –
and they give them freely.

But then the shipping!
The cost, and certainly far,
not great for the cows, so
the herd was left, still loved and
growing on Kenyan ground. But

you can keep the poems, my time –
like this metaphor, I’ve got
nowhere else to go; it’s just –
all I see are broken hearts,
and my arms are full of cows
but everyone is American,

and I can’t turn good intentions,
gangly limbs, these verses
into dollars, or sense – but please
take these poems;
hold my hand.

I’d probably offer cows
if I had any.