AIR RIGHTS

One way to think of it is

I require absence and you are

lifelong a room just left. Except

you bloom not empty half-light

but a stand of trees at the edge

of the meadow where my life

leaks out. Static is the soundtrack

of the cabbie’s dream but oh

how we love our troubadours,

sad acoustic boys and girls,

sunshine stuck in their throats. Some

days it takes all my concentration

not to pick the lettuce that lives

down the street. Then I wake

with tendrils between my fingers

and once again I’m feigning

innocence on the one hand,

aping grief on the other. See,

I would eat the lily from under

the frog, drink the river between

each strider’s wake. It’s my way

of feeling productive, of not

too terribly envying the swan

still as a figurine on her cloud mirror

until the trees go back to normal,

which is a kind of sleep instead of

clawing magnificent at the sky.