Self Portrait

How harsh and hard my lines
intersect memory, noon sunshine,
ignore those clouds a concern
somewhere in the belly
of experience and summer,
small moments leaking heat,
dust, cracked clay, bleeding
concrete odors spiders exude
in basements, on grass green
and glue for bare feet already turning
gray as though October is
born prescient, always leaves
departing on slow freight trains.

The eyes turned south
are north of destination,
hair longer than social fashion,
mouth open on a word,
tongue turned into verbs,
fingers flexed around
a gesture slipping off
the page of present, past a belt
holding up potential, body half-turned
to poetry, wearing photography,
forever never arriving
at an imagined destination,
the way history arrives in a text –
counterpoint to another version,
another experience, another day added
to the menu, yet never in season.