Partial Self-portrait as Poet, with Novelty Cakes

Some days, I ask myself where exactly 
I am on the scale between emerging 
and established; or if I've been filed
under the category older poet. No, 
I've never been in the BAP; never 
gotten an NEA nor a Guggenheim (yet)  
though believe me, I've tried; barely 
make it on the lists of must-reads 
for AAPI or FilAm history month.  
I had a student who is now a Very 
Famous and Important Poet; I don't 
think she remembers me much 
anymore, if at all. I had a teacher 
who said, It's really about who you know. 
But I still believe in the poems I want 
to write, believe in the air I breathe, 
the tiny electric pulse which begins
as a prickle somewhere in the brain 
or sensorium, informing me I need 
to sink into the shag carpet of that
moment and stop asking only the logical 
questions; because then a trapdoor 
might open and who knows what bright, 
surprising universe I might fall into? 
One of my daughters is busy planning 
a birthday cake for her soon-to-be-second-
grader. Last year, the theme was Lego 
Ninjago; she made everything by hand, 
including a little bridge, and temple arches 
painted red and gold. This year, it's Dungeons 
and Dragons: she sent me a photo of a fierce
fondant dragon lording it over three layers
wrapped in royal icing and dripping with candy 
treasures. You're so good at this, I tell her; 
you should consider doing a side gig. Except, 
she says, and rightly so— it wouldn't feel 
fun anymore. And I realize it's the same for me
—though it's easy to forget, when the world is
so pushy-noisy. I want to live inside the names
of things that can take me close to the heart 
of those same things, and also somewhere else 
I've never been: their mycelial networks
holding hands in the dirt, while overhead
a canopy of oak and elm and maple publish  
their own versions of feeling, thinking, being.