This Moment is Gone

The Second Self

Suddenly you are still sitting there

when someone in you has gotten up

and walked out, slamming the door,

never to be seen again.

Without a word, he has left you behind.

Who knows, maybe it was a woman’s smile,

something you said, a fight at the office.

Whatever it was, the damage is done,

that long marriage with yourself is over.

Now you must get up and try to find him

in another time zone. Having broken through

the cocoon that insulated your old future,

he’s already out there living the authentic life.

He’s left you high and dry, the bastard!

He is out there alone at some corner bar;

he’s hearing all our old songs from the other side.

He’s walking cold and unfamiliar streets.

Now he’s pausing to think his own thoughts

on lanes that are rich and quick with autumn.

Soon he’ll be forgetting all our old midnight talks.

You must follow him. There is no other choice.

Rendezvous

What fascinates the horizons is our love of one spot.

They envy us our locality and single-mindedness.

Hard to imagine, being one thing rather than another--

the choice that was never made. And yet what is

identity? Does the rush of wind off the Atlantic

in storm, the gray mass of wind and water moving,

know of our special problem or expect our prayers?

Doubtful. But we slink from the truth like lizards

slithering into the chinks of rock under a scorching sun.

We are alone in the world and our mothers with us.

For the ambiguous skies, God is more imaginable,

one of its own, someone unbothered by space or time.

I think of your fingers tight on the wheel, your stoic smile,

finding your way seaward under these same clouds.

Feedback

The last time I said anything to you

you fell into a fountain to join the pennies

and green waters covered me head to foot.

Over the years I have learned to be patient

with the responses I provoke in others, which is

like discovering yourself by long division.

Your eyes always seem to speak out of turn,

but their thrust implies a trust in the unknown,

scattering me to the farthest corners.

Further reflection lands me in a zoo

of loose numbers, like birds, trying to fly home.

I have been here before. Like infinity,

you were late in arriving at this moment.

Your perspective is precise, reconstructive.

If I knew how, I’d let you manage my dreams.

Territorial

Before everything started you were

like this: an open pasture dotted

with milkweed and spreading away

without limit except for

one thin black line of fence posts,

minimal in the expanse,

forming a slight arch amidst the stubble

and thick air in the middle distance,

a constraint that only served to emphasize

the openness the fields implied

and to define more surely the perspective

of the untouchable blue haze

of the rising woodlands even farther on.

I loved you, yes, but felt like

a Tartar hoof-romping over such

fertile and open-minded possibility.

Even now I walk your acreage

not as a proud owner or squire

but as one stunned, puzzled,