The first book you truly
understood
sent your days into
flatspin. Indiscretions,
indirection, applauding
it all glumly, bending
whatever soft metal
those chicken arms
could bend. Landing
at Mirabel from Shannon
you found the plateau
a throng of jugglers,
no one you knew answered
their phone, Hell’s Kitchen
shut with a whumpf,
lifting litter into
the traffic. Your thumb
went up, a letter box
flag, and we sank
back into the valley.
Men drilled into cutaways
in the roadside, planted
charges and it rained
granite over the rail line.
Women acquired labs in
German cities, their language
bladed, distant as the pole-
star. You shrugged off every
option that wasn’t
a long wait in a dim room
for who knew what. You
played the larval card while
they tightened their belts
and stood up to the days:
softball, CorningWare, baptisms.
You wanted a lot less than
the albatross of never
having loved. The seasons
did what they do and you
quit feigning an interest;
some roads widened, big
constrictor snakes with a fawn
lodged in their gullets. There
were some successes. But mostly
you maundered past ballparks
in the meaty evenings,
deciding to live, checking
the feeling that followed
against the length and depth
of the backstop’s shadow.