Gold Children
are often given like alms to the poor,
to parents who would chop
an enchanted fish in half
because fertilizer is all they can imagine.
These children who go in different directions,
like halves of a fish planted in the garden,
like two lilies bending toward and away from the sun,
and yet are bound to each other by the same clotted roots.
The world is a harsh place, isn't it?
A girl conceals herself in the thick skin of a bear
and yet she's still so easily hurt.
Every night in his dreams the boy shoots the witch for both of them.
But in the morning his gun has disappeared.
The world's a dangerous place is it not?
And gold children are two sides of a coin
being flipped over and over.
What's hanging on the wager? they want to know.
And how's it going to come up - heads or tails?
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