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The boy beside me
is not you but he
is familiar in all
the important ways.
I pass through life
finding you over
and over again—
oppress you
with love. And every
surrogate?
Afflicted by my
kindness, they leave
me with my music.
I loved you before
I ever loved you.
Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Franklin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 9, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
My life without you—I have already
seen it. Today, on the salt marsh.
The red-winged blackbird perched
in the tallest tree, sage green branches
falling over the water. She sat there
for a long time, doing nothing.
As she lifted up to fly, the slender branch
shook from the release of her weight.
What secret had Nietzsche discovered
when he walked the Turin streets
before he flung his arms around
a horse being beaten and collapsed
into a decade-long coma? Clinging
to the cowering brown beast, he said
Mother, I am stupid. Wild hair and a three-
piece tweed suit constrained the body
that held the mind that knew too much.
Why am I mining dead men for answers
when they were all as mad as I am?
The horse, his eyes hollow as those
of the Burmese elephant that Orwell shot
decades later, had the look of every
I glimpse the tulips every two seconds.
They arrived late this year. Those who planted
The bulbs must not have considered how they
Would look from here—red, paired with pink dogwood.
Seven umbrellas float by; only one
Inverts. Ammonia swathed on the machines
Makes this walk to nowhere less appealing.
A police car patrols the next window
Where a dingy white van remains parked. It
Is difficult to discern if it’s still
Raining. Two bridges (I have crossed neither)
And the asylum for the criminally