Habit that began on the Plateau, perhaps,
or letting that latch click shut past
midnight then out to squint through
the indifferent dark at an indifferent
town — ill-clothed, unintentioned. Spearing
church spires, Scotch thistle angering
the unused lots where structures stood
or fell depending on their mood. The bridge,
untended cedar hedge, blank drive-in, and
Jeeps on blocks, were as they were on prior
walks. So, habit seeded by hours soaked
in indirection, ennui, when seeing meant
seeing an object recede, like a thing one loved
that couldn’t love back or even mimic the act
of attention, and so to draw it near
was to costume it in rags you’d dredged
from where the trestle’s pilings stood like
customs guards and made the river give
over its holdings.
Call it the tug of our
sense of being somehow less; of having
wandered so far from whatever centre
that any echo died in transit, became
the leftovers of small animals who’d called
a rough halt to it in the outlying acreage
with no hope of a watcher, praying, tying twigs
together. At night I’ll imagine remembering X
pulling over where I walked along the verge,
his gleaming Dodge rumbling like the changeable
heart of the world, “It’s my goddamn chariot,
get in, but puke on the seats and I’ll shootcha.”
Do we get a little precious about it? Yes, and why
not, if we fail to inflate the loved in order to take
in more, we’re left with what it was.