As a child
In grammar school
I wondered if a comma is
Any similar to a coma,
As an adult
Having watched my father
ride that frozen black bull
too slowly into that
Goodnight moon
Without elegance
nobility
Or at very least
swiftness
I see that
each is so much like a pause,
such a serpentine suspension in
the baffling beauty of life or
whatever God has named our passages
That I live in fear
Of ever using a period
Again.