Narwhals, II.

June 16, 2016 Uncategorized

You keep talking
about a place I’m supposed to
get excited for,
to save my pennies for,
should be looking forward to
all the comfort there, with its exquisite debts and hard-earned luxuries like
couches, which I suppose are nice but

Have you ever read
the lichen on a sheet of
granite with your fingertips,
searched its syntax for
a history,
an origin to the tangle of electricity-addled neurons that got you here

—dancing, terrified, upon a
batholithic monument to futility;

where you come to know gravity
in the verses you sing
under your breath
in an attempt to keep from falling,
in a lingua terra
we cannot write
can only feel, like
Being rained on while swimming or
the silence before a crash?
This is where my soul goes
while you’re talking about couches;
Where it smells like ferns and cinnamon, and
the story is told without words.
I keep waiting for you
to walk up out of the trees, smiling
Yeah, you.
Please don’t tell me you’ve seen enough of the stars or
That feather pillows are better;
I got all the maps laid out.
We got a million grass-covered hills to lie on and
argue about constellations
until the moon is high enough
to start climbing.
Do you remember what it felt like—
the first time you struck flint to steel
and made fire?

I’ll be in the car.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *