BLUE STRAGGLERS

I can’t compete with your wizardry

or that gold comb in your hair.

Your packed lunches involve cherries

and other provisions precisely laid

as only a sea captain might command

and never be asked to share. Sometimes

it’s a question of scale: a raspberry

to the lip, a horse’s muzzle to the palm.

Sometimes it’s a question of distance:

mercury threads of geese five miles high,

the sky a sink and our bravest journeys

the quiver that escapes a broken thermometer

chased by a child’s thumb. We’d be lying

if we didn’t acknowledge that a playmate’s

tumble is a good opportunity to seize

the ball on its lazy roll away. Why not

admire the vulture? The eagle scavenges,

too, and its wing beat is no more or less

magnificent. Knowledge is temperamental,

like how I sat for all those hours in French

class while people grew fluent around me

and I learned only the rote conjugation

of a few useless verbs, but I can recall every

brown fleck that littered your green eyes.

Here, I wove you this poncho out of gentian

petals using only a junco’s beak. Gently,

I shoehorn my dreams each night into bed,

but even they drift off and in the end

only this half-baked heartbreak is mine.