You Never Called Me Baby Poem by John Tansey

You never called me baby

Not once through all the long years



Now nearly blind, I fumble

Shaping form from its edges



Like plotting the land with mile markers

This is how a poem works



Seesawing up and down

Between nobility and lust



The indulgence of one

gets to the drought of the other



Three years with no words

It is a gestation I am in



Giving birth to my inner child

Where all the traumas began



At nearly sixty, I feel I am slowly dying

From ailments and loneliness



My body has turned on itself

and you never called me baby


John Tansey