new poem
Après la reconstruction de l'Alseran
I start my story over with terrain and wildlife,
putting first the gulf of night, the silence found
in winter’s frost across the forest, in rivers’
seamless sounds.
I put together an atlas of sidestreets, attendre,
I put aside regulations of beauty, I found ways
beyond the normal routes and rights beyond
normal laws. reasons to wait for, wait on,
hang on, hang about, abide, watch, stay
stick around, look forward to, expect : I do
expect, attendre - I wait and wait.
sometimes when we start to tell things, words
rewrite themselves like engineers programming
deep into the night - sometimes the things we
say are not what we said at all. The watchtowers
have all been temporarily taken down and we open
all the windows, let the wind in, and talk about
spring : we forget about petty differences and pretend
we’re not the least bit mean.
I start my story again, rebuilding, for words are like
wires and pipes: small things to carry needs far off
into this night. We put together voices, having ideas
in mind but spreading them into places where they
simply lack the right amount of time. (rappelez-vous,
les tours de guet ont été temporairement retirée)
I found a way away, deep in the still of night, some rooftop, only now
I can come here and only I bother, really : I can sit here not alone
(next to you, here I sit near) watching the Thai restaurant’s
boys take out the trash at twenty past midnight, the owner
forgets again to turn off the ”open” sign as she locks up and
a lone cop walks down the sidewalk, a couple leaves a bar
with a cartoon of an owl on its yellow sign while a jet whines
way above.
first time we both see a stork, swallow, or budding tree
comes passion in how we cross swollen rivers, build bridges,
book passage to afar. There is passion in terrain, in animals,
and we move like a wheel sprung from its cart,
like a ball kicked too high and far over the goal.
you think we’ve come to a new thing but it’s as old as the hills,
really, you know it is.