Gravity
Once, when my niece was two or three,
Still wearing her diapers far beyond
The age she needed them, as some babies
Are known to do, my mother discovered
A single dried up turd which clung
To the ceiling like a giant cocoon.
It had been there for weeks, we surmised --
The shit had dried into a monstrous lump,
All traces of former life and smell
And anything else that would have caused disgust
Drained away by central heating and dry wintertime.
Why this incident sticks with me, I haven't
The faintest idea. We couldn't understand then,
Either, especially trying to decide what she had done,
My niece, being the only baby in the house,
And the turd being so tiny and so perfectly formed.
She must have dug the dung from her diaper and flung
It up into the air, watching it tear like a missile
To splatter against the white of the ceiling
And stick there, held against the pull of earth.
She must have waited for it to fall, watching
With demonic baby eyes the coming of the effect
Of her cause. The disappointment must have
Been as crushing as gravity, I suppose.
� 2002 Tony Whitt
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