it's poetry month!
Also Love You by Reginald Shepherd (from Isn't It Romantic, Verse Press 2004)
I think of you when I am dead, the way rocks
think of earthworms and oak roots, tendrils
that break them down to loam and nutrients,
something growing out of every
disappearance. I will be simpler then, sheer
molecule, much easier to understand:
steam rising from sidewalk vents, rain
accumulating on ailanthus leaves
after the rain has ended, the lingering smell
of rain and rotting leaves. (Look for me,
I'll be around, that's every song: I'll be that
too.) I will you kites unraveled from their tangled lines
(so far up you can't tell what they want to imitate),
weather balloons and evening stars, easily
mistaken objects of luminosity; observation
satellites to record you just out of sight
and tell you what you've missed. I will be
the lichen bubbling from a crack in the
Belmont Rocks, where you don't go,
between the brilliant men loitering
in their temporary beauty. You will. I will
you every artificial slab that makes a beach
if you think hard enough, anchored
fronds of blue-green algae bobbing
in the surface motion just like kelp
weaving in waves on Long Island Sound,
like, come to think of it, sirens' hair combed out
to tourmaline and emerald. I could be this fallen
branch across your path in Lincoln Park, marker: grasp it
and push it aside. I will you people bicycling
just past sunset and joggers straying from
their path, whole evenings of various exercise,
from this first of a whole series of lampposts
burned out, blocks of them. I will be the wind
that messes up your hair, you've just
gotten it cut, pollen, pawn of light and
light winds, air sultry and somehow
sexual, those men still sunning themselves,
giving themselves up to light and passing
eyes, your eyes perhaps, I'll be the things
left behind for you, I'll be much kinder
then. I'll kiss the drowsing atmosphere
all a summer's afternoon, and that's not all.
I think of you when I am dead, the way rocks
think of earthworms and oak roots, tendrils
that break them down to loam and nutrients,
something growing out of every
disappearance. I will be simpler then, sheer
molecule, much easier to understand:
steam rising from sidewalk vents, rain
accumulating on ailanthus leaves
after the rain has ended, the lingering smell
of rain and rotting leaves. (Look for me,
I'll be around, that's every song: I'll be that
too.) I will you kites unraveled from their tangled lines
(so far up you can't tell what they want to imitate),
weather balloons and evening stars, easily
mistaken objects of luminosity; observation
satellites to record you just out of sight
and tell you what you've missed. I will be
the lichen bubbling from a crack in the
Belmont Rocks, where you don't go,
between the brilliant men loitering
in their temporary beauty. You will. I will
you every artificial slab that makes a beach
if you think hard enough, anchored
fronds of blue-green algae bobbing
in the surface motion just like kelp
weaving in waves on Long Island Sound,
like, come to think of it, sirens' hair combed out
to tourmaline and emerald. I could be this fallen
branch across your path in Lincoln Park, marker: grasp it
and push it aside. I will you people bicycling
just past sunset and joggers straying from
their path, whole evenings of various exercise,
from this first of a whole series of lampposts
burned out, blocks of them. I will be the wind
that messes up your hair, you've just
gotten it cut, pollen, pawn of light and
light winds, air sultry and somehow
sexual, those men still sunning themselves,
giving themselves up to light and passing
eyes, your eyes perhaps, I'll be the things
left behind for you, I'll be much kinder
then. I'll kiss the drowsing atmosphere
all a summer's afternoon, and that's not all.