One way to think of it is
I require absence and you are
lifelong a room just left. Except
you bloom not empty half-light
but a stand of trees at the edge
of the meadow where my life
leaks out. Static is the soundtrack
of the cabbie’s dream but oh
how we love our troubadours,
sad acoustic boys and girls,
sunshine stuck in their throats. Some
days it takes all my concentration
not to pick the lettuce that lives
down the street. Then I wake
with tendrils between my fingers
and once again I’m feigning
innocence on the one hand,
aping grief on the other. See,
I would eat the lily from under
the frog, drink the river between
each strider’s wake. It’s my way
of feeling productive, of not
too terribly envying the swan
still as a figurine on her cloud mirror
until the trees go back to normal,
which is a kind of sleep instead of
clawing magnificent at the sky.
From Late Empire (Copper Canyon Press, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Olstein. Used with the permission of the author.