| The Falling Dolls -Anne Sexton- |
| Dolls, by the thousands, are falling out of the sky and I look up in fear and wonder who will catch them? The leaves, holding them like green dishes? The ponds, open as whine glasses to drink them down? The tops of buildings to smash in their stomachs and leave them there to get sooty? The highways with their hard skins so that they may be run over like muskrats? The seas, looking for something to shock the fish? The electric fences to burn their hair off? The cornfields where they can lie unpicked? The national parks where centuries later they'll be found petrified like stone babies? I hold my arms open and catch one, two, three...ten in all running back and forth like a badminton player, catching dolls, the babies I practice upon, but others crack on the roof and I dream, awake, I dream of falling dolls who need cribs and blankets and pajamas with real feet in them. Why is there no mother? Why are all these dolls falling out of the sky? Was there a father? Or have the planets cut holes in their nets and let our childhood out, or are we the dolls themselves, born but never fed? |