By the seventh time the story was told,
the girl stood naked in the sprinklers
and the fighter pilot had flown on E
through Russia. The bear could almost talk,
the crippled dog could almost run and we
could almost love each other forever.
Funny word, forever. You can put it at the end
of almost any sentence and feel better about
yourself, about how you’ve worked in a spray
of sparks accomplishing almost nothing
and feel that’s exactly what the gods
intended; look at the galaxies, spilled
milk, their lust and retrograde whims.
What was it you were promised? I’m sorry
if it turned out to be a lie. But the girl
really did drink fire from a flower,
the dog did leap a chasm, days advanced
and the stars spun through our umbras
and threw their backward light upon
the bent, deniable, rusted, unaffirmable,
blank-prone forever.