'Why do you
have stripes
in your forehead,
Mama?
Are you
old?'

Not old.
But not so
young
that I cannot
see
the world contracting
upon itself
& the circle
closing
at the end.

As the furrows
in my brow
deepen,
I can see
myself
sinking back
into that childhood
street
I walked along
with my grandfather,
thinking he was old
at sixty-three
since I was four,
as you are four
to my forty.

Forty years
to take
the road out . . .
Will another forty
take me
back?

Back to the street
I grew up on,
back to
my mother's breast.
back to the second
world war
of a second
child,
back
to the cradle
endlessly
rocking?

I am young
as you are
Molly-
yet with stripes
in my brow;
I earn my youth
as you must earn
your age.

These stripes
are decorations
for my valor-
forty years
of marching
to a war
I could not declare,
nor locate,
yet have somehow
won.

Now,
I begin
to unwin,
unravelling
the sleeves
of care
that have
stitched up
this brow,
unravelling
the threads
that have kept
me scared,
as I pranced
over the world,
seemingly fearless,
working
without a net,
knowing
if I fell
it would
only be
into that same
childhood street,
where I dreaded
to tread
on the lines-
not knowing
the lines
would someday
tread
on me.

Molly,
when you are forty,
read this poem
& tell me:
have we won
or lost
the war?