The New
If someone jumped I’d jump
into the warm whatever of mid-
May
I’d not leap as the
maneuver’s overused– I understand
these liminal expectations from
poetry
if I haven’t quite mastered
the rudimentary mechanics
of swimming. I am the sediment
from a different continent rising
to you as loam scraping against
sand. You said wave, I said wind.
The red tide carried us. Whatever.
We ended at Point B. The alternate
universe if you’d call it that.
But I said the stop sign.
I said all kinds of things
as you drove through
ocean construction.
Scrub
the provision
the carcass
provision
the carcass
a carcass
to provide
the carcass
blaze
Fade
Barber shop this morning– an old man
talks about his sixty-year high
school reunion, how even
if he could afford to
go, the seven friends
he wants to see
he never
again
will.
You Ask If I Want Children
The answer is perpetuate
humanity. The answer is nothing
is certain, but we know that.
We will go into the shrouded
wood as the sun sets onward,
as the world spins through
another autumn getting older,
not wiser. The leaf flutters.
What we want to catch
always eludes our grasp.