To find your way back
To find your way back,
start in a cafe at noon,
the kind of paradise you’d talk about
when the doubt would swallow me whole.
Some fantasy about pressed slacks,
straw hats, and the sun –
how it could always do something
just right to your face.
To find your way back,
burrow into that space carved out
after the dream you have,
the one with the shadows
where you live in a glass house
and there’s nowhere to go
so you collect enough of yourself
to sit on the staircase and wait,
not even watching as they inch closer.
To find your way back,
you may have to go too far.
Once we talked about riptides
and how people drown
trying to swim against them.
I thought it was a metaphor,
that you were the riptide
pulling me under, but now
I think maybe
you were just making conversation.
Hyperbole
To cut down a tree,
a really big tree,
you must start from the top.
Real men know about tree cutting.
There’s meaning in it somewhere,
but not now. Reflection is for the lithe,
the fraught, and too many minutes
pass in it. Action is the game here –
gasoline, constitution, and the physics
of life and death.
But sometimes,
on a particularly hot day,
a woman will offer a drink
and it’s easy to forget yourself;
to sit among the branches,
wipe the sweat from your face,
and wonder if she’s happy
as you gather what’s left of yourself
to finish the job.
A Scene from a Reading in the Future
You are a memoir I’d read excerpts of
to handfuls of women, all looking
to find and re-find something like you
in my words. Maybe you’d show up,
find easy resolution with only a look
like they do on TV. I’d let you
stand in the back, lean on the faux
wood paneled wall as they wonder
if you may be the one whispering
from the page. But that’s as far as I’ll get.
Those women are getting older
and you’re only an invention of mine.
A heart more clever
could do more with you.
