My poetry
blows across the horizon in the dry wind till I fade
into the green belly of June.
I have always relied on words to exorcise the feeling,
which bites, and which demands,
from my pounding ape-chest.Ā
If roots donāt grow
beneath the shape of the letter, then whatās the purpose
of all these trite metaphors?
But my chest is bottomless
with want,Ā
stuck, half-drowned, in the black honey
of a lonely childhood.
Where do I put it down?
If I aim to make art, like a god makes man, then I must
set my jaw, and learn
some raw truth: what else?
But you havenāt texted me back since Monday, and Iām imagining
sitting beside you at the beach, studying how your hands move when you talk.
The sky is blue. The trees are green. The goldfinches fly.
Whatās the purpose of roots
if, in time,
everything is eaten?
If you asked me, Iād drive north
with my new license to you,Ā
to a town named for an American businessman, with an Esso station and a Shoppers,
and far more people than these crossroads
I grew up between.
Whatās the purpose of desire if it just swallows its own tail?
I try
not to get too existential, to avoid the well-trod grass,
but after 300 000 years of watching the stars
come out over the water, I still canāt believe thereās nothing
left to say. So, I say something, say anything, with the meat
of my heart.
(Would you love me like that?)
(Would you love me?)
The flowering dogwood at the park is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
What else? I never thought I could have
beautiful things,
but I can see myself loving you.
Are words poetry if they are just core-dark oil,Ā
dripping from the soul?
Maybe itās enough: to give
myself something to live on,
to hope forā
pollen and nectar and cottonwood seeds on the air.
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