The Year Is Always Two Years Ago

When the barber puts the smock on me

I become a secret with a head. But even

this is about to change.

*

I was mute most of the season we met,

and couldn’t tell you how I’d spent

nearly twenty lucky previous years,

wherein cars about to run me down

made sudden and dramatic turns

onto side streets or on-ramps,

leaving me stunned but not quite killed.

*

During that time, songs came

and secretly never went, drifting

brightly over beaches, fields, and towns.

*

You gave me a medium neither air nor water

on which to survive. Has anyone ever taken

a photo of an angel smirking—I bet I could

get one to do it, if not to hold still.

*

Being on TV has never been so easy

says a lunatic voice on the radio. If I’m dead

when you find this, it will be sad or funny

or both, given our sagging empire,

or neither if you never knew me.

*

Those couples slumped against themselves,

sleeping on trains, they must be that tired.