her car pulled up outside
tires crunching through snow
piled on the roadside
30 hours of planes and airports
confusion and mislaid planning
and foolish dreams
of dreams
and dashed dreams
all for a lady who parks with
tenacity like this:
car angled between the road
and the plowed snow
the determination in her
explosions of movement,
blizzards cannot
ice it over
I am grinning
in the warmth inside
behind
heavy glass and bared windows.
outside
she sits in her car
a circuit of anticipation runs
beneath the falling snow
faces of the past blur.
memory does a crap
job of remembering.
you’d be better off
plotting lines on graph paper
with a roulette wheel
photos fade in meaning and music,
their tableaux cruelly replace
movement and smell and laughter
her face is a feeling,
an abstract fresco of sparkling
excitement.
then the big moment
snow boots on
scarf tied just so
check the mirror the mirror
inhale ten times
open the door
float breathless
inhale again
but there is no such thing.
monuments of the past
are not for the future
this is what you have:
1.
casting seed shaped gravel
in blighted soil
hoping for roses
2.
polishing reflections in a dusty pond.
dust filtered in streaming sunlight,
dust motes like mist
blown on a nostalgic breeze
from stacks of
dusty chapbooks
about how things should have been
3.
you’ll only make it to 2 if
the years have run away from you
and they were all the same
and you were left confused in spring
and conflicted in autumn
time takes it’s amusements
and leaves the rest as evidence
the greater inner beauty is a poor choice
it counts only when the body dies
and the soul flies free
the rest is disgust and failure
but our eyes locked like
the first thunderbolt
canonized in my recollection
as I climbed in her car
locked with the same wonder
and a curious critique;
that at least was something new.
and then
we drove
into everything else new
new history was being painted
in epic scale
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