Somewhere beyond faith and grace there is
the footprint of logic lost in the purest light. 

Not hidden at all, but a vehicle, a necessity, neither
mop nor bucket, but whatever gives the floor its shine.

The sun through the window pours on the floor,
and the wood glistens as if in praise.
As if a child breaking into a run. That is what I see

through the window now. A child breaking
into a run for the simple flame that must burn
and because there are such words.

Of course, I could be wailing.
Of course, the child is not a memory,
only a gesture on my part.

Yesterday, I fed a friend's cat and talked to her,
the town was emptied and filled with
snow embroidered with tire tracks. 

I fed a friend’s cat and she rubbed her sides against my calves. 

The thing to say now is that I am in the middle of a life
in a house with the owners on holiday.

Or to say a car engine hums (the owner forgetting
the keys inside), and is on its way to a crystalline loss.

Here deduction is howling at an oncoming storm.

The thing is, I fed a friend’s cat and later poured
a bowl of milk for her and she sniffed it,
barely licked it, and left.

The thought is. The life is.

I’ve visited graves—tombstones ten feet high.
I ran through the cemetery and laughed my Cairo laugh.
I wanted to be arrested by the police, wanted

someone to take down what I had to say.
Whatever I would have said then would have been the truth.

But there was no one there.
Only dust and a shitload of romance.

Only dust and the hum of the interstate. Detroit,
Toledo, the hitchhiker hums a foreign song.

I feed the cat and talk to her.
I take the milk away and begin to forget
and the cat stares at the missing milk.

Billions of snowflakes in between,
and the befores that follow the first before.

the orange ball arcs perfectly into the orange hoop

making a sound like a drawer closing

you will never get to hold that

I am here and nothing terrible will ever happen

across the street the giant white house full of kids

turns the pages of an endless book

the mother comes home and finds the child animal sleeping

I left my notebook beside the bed

the father came home and sat and quietly talked

one square of light on the wall waiting patiently

I will learn my multiplication tables

while the woman in the old photograph looks in a different direction

I was just a latchkey kid roaming the cul de sac,
King Tut always on my mind. At holiday parties
I ate fondue and pretended it was my hand
controlling the blob in lava lamps. It has not
been proven otherwise. For one conceived
in a waterbed between fights, what can life be
but a conversation pit with a disco ball sun,
or a wood-paneled den with a wet bar
from which I steal sips of all liquors equally?
My favorite car is a van with a bed inside of it.
The floor is quicksand and macrame beards the walls.
Buddha candles light the way. My favorite
books are pocket-sized, from the checkout line.
Horoscopes and diets are all I know.