End Roll
 for my mother on her birthday
  
 It’s a gift from the newspaper office, you say—
 an end roll of newsprint on a spool
 that stands 3 feet tall on its cardboard spine—
 free for the taking. 
  
 All yours, you say,
 and I watch as the center cannot hold,
 as paper begins to unspool itself
 like yarn from a wild skein.
  
 At first, I can’t bring myself to put pencil to paper.
 The white field before me is too dear.
  
 But even at twelve, 
 I understand the invitation before me.
 The furrows of my palms loosen,
 and then I begin to draw what I’ve only imagined—
 tentative at first, but then surer—
  
 until I’ve given form to an acre of possibilities
 until I’ve drawn right up to the cardboard core.
  
 I’m still the one who trembles before paper,
 the one who finds the world on the back of an envelope,
 whose hours are lost and gained 
 when my pen finds its way. 
  
 I was born a fallow field
 where shapeless, wordless things would incubate,
 the loam of my lifetime deeper and richer because
 even before I knew this,
  
 you knew.