Find and share the perfect poems.
So this morning I made a list
of obsessions and you were on it.
And waiting, and forgiveness, and five-dollar bills,
and despots, telescopes, anonymity, beauty,
silent comedy, and waiting.
I could forswear all these things
and just crawl back into the bed
you and I once slept in.
What would happen then?
Play any film backwards and it’s elegy.
Play it fast-forward it’s a gas.
I try not to get attached.
But Lincoln!
I see stars when I look at him.
Except for the shirt pulled from the ocean, except for her hands, which keep folding the shirt, except for her body, which once held their bodies, my sister wants everything back now-- If there were a god who could out of empty shells carried by waves to shore make amends-- If the ocean saved in a jar could keep from turning to salt-- She's hearing things: bird calling to bird, cat outside the door, thorn of the blackberry against the trellis.
This evening I shared a cab with a priest who said it was a fine day to ride cross town with a writer. But I can't finish the play I said, it's full of snow. The jaywalkers walked slowly, a cigarette warmed someone's hand. Some of the best sermons don't have endings, he said while the tires rotated unceasingly beneath us. All over town people were waiting and doubleparked and making love and waiting. The temperature dropped until the shiverers zipped their jackets and all manner of things started up again.
iv.
I know agape means both dumbly
open and love not the kind of love
that climbed the stairs to you.