I’m writing poems to the echoes. Life was here, but caught the eight-fifteen somewhere. Sat in the day coach listening to the same sound that opened the petals of a country. Only sadness remains, guest unwilling to go home, full of anecdotes about. And in the rooms I remember, words are arranged like furniture. Easy chair for contemplation, coffee table a wake-me-up call. I’m writing lyrics for the shadows so they can sing. A choir standing on the rift between imagination and the dishes.
Poem as Immigrant
The geomorphology sun creates— tablecloth spilled across morning.
Although stitch-worked into our conversation, fantasy seems as plain as the phone bill, bank statement, or that note left on the counter beside the spent dishes still to be resurrected after last night's corpse, along with our enervated mood.
(Snuffed candle/closed book/bar clothes in the closet' s furthest corner.)
I drift with dragons through the ether of purple sun. After breakfast, my molar hurts again. The rose has genuflected to the table— a dance to come? The garage should be swept, our car washed.
Let me stand on the first leaked strands of today, as though I'm at the train station, surveying schedules in another language, for destinations that mean nothing, except a difference from what exists, from the earth on which my feet seek to gain a purchase.
Let me empty my knapsack of experience for security, watch it disappear as mist at the foot of buildings, watch it creep down alleys, through unlocked doors, listen to it laugh at jokes and situations I don't understand— let me imagine a grey coat, black shoes, well-worn pants, a certain gait and an acquired romance with the mysteries a stranger sees.