There you are, behind a fence,
picking up my 19-year-old ass
from swimming lessons.
My whistle is still around my neck.
Your socks are new.
And you look as if
you’ve just committed
a crime that I will never know about.
Then we drive away in that big white car,
the one that takes and takes.
One gallon every nine miles.
Monday, November 24, 2008
November
Two girls in the park
parked on a patchwork quilt
on the wet green grass
linger and drink milkshakes.
It is November.
But they pretend it is summer still
and if we keep up lies long enough
soon we will close in on the truth.
parked on a patchwork quilt
on the wet green grass
linger and drink milkshakes.
It is November.
But they pretend it is summer still
and if we keep up lies long enough
soon we will close in on the truth.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Unfoldings
Years ago, our sailboat, slicing through saltwater, was suddenly amid one thousand dolphins, slicing too through a sky-shaded surface. I watched, clicking pictures, and in them there is the back of my hand pointing, the fins of hundreds, and the windy chop. But in my life, each moment is the beginning of a dream, or the stoop to a doorway that leads off. There, from that moment, I am not watching them from the bow but diving in. I reach out underwater toward their white bellies, their smiling snouts, and sink deep alongside their rubber torsos, my own beige one an ornament on the blue.
I can apply these exits anywhere: insert them into escape-worthy moments and they become trapdoors down and away. Such as when he left, closing the door behind him. I returned to my shaded room. But in that next world over, it developed differently from there: our whole existence together unfolded. Much like a film of a paper crane being made, then played in reverse—this soft winged creature we have built loses his wings, the sharp beak. And the great worked hands of the universe smooth out each fold, each crease, and bring us back with thumbs and a table surface to the broad pieces of paper we were before all this. He, a squared golden plane. I, a dancing surface of green flowers. From there, one can decide anew to become anything again: a box, a flower, a paper hat or even, once more, a winged beaked thing.
Then there is today. I am on this train careening toward the clock of the day, the telephone, and the howling tick of productivity. But in that other world I skip my stop; I ride and ride until the tracks run out and then I find a new metallic road and begin again, riding farther and farther until I have circled the world in these boots and this grey wool scarf.
I can apply these exits anywhere: insert them into escape-worthy moments and they become trapdoors down and away. Such as when he left, closing the door behind him. I returned to my shaded room. But in that next world over, it developed differently from there: our whole existence together unfolded. Much like a film of a paper crane being made, then played in reverse—this soft winged creature we have built loses his wings, the sharp beak. And the great worked hands of the universe smooth out each fold, each crease, and bring us back with thumbs and a table surface to the broad pieces of paper we were before all this. He, a squared golden plane. I, a dancing surface of green flowers. From there, one can decide anew to become anything again: a box, a flower, a paper hat or even, once more, a winged beaked thing.
Then there is today. I am on this train careening toward the clock of the day, the telephone, and the howling tick of productivity. But in that other world I skip my stop; I ride and ride until the tracks run out and then I find a new metallic road and begin again, riding farther and farther until I have circled the world in these boots and this grey wool scarf.
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