What the Poet Meant
What the poet meant,
she can say
in the panning of her lens.
Rivers tumble through the sky.
Lift your head.
Listen, sniff
the sound and scent
before wading in
among the passing cabbages
uncurling in their bins,
the drops of ocean
steaming in the bed,
a rabbit pinned and screaming
against a speckled, chain link fence,
a pail of garbage down the street
tilting on its edge.
She knows my tongue and manner,
and those of many men.
Knows their skin is creased,
to tell the story where they’ve been,
knows their dark and bloody center,
raw and ever on the mend;
and that a gift now given
will be taken back again;
that sun, moon, and stars
are keepers of the clock,
even when the drapes are drawn
and the rooms are shades of dark.
She lingers by the radiator,
on the blanket, near my hand,
lets me know in tumbled breath
her river dreams new bends.
Without me and all these trappings,
her world might live again.