IN DEFENSE OF WANDER

2011-11-19T13:51:00.001-08:00

She claims insatiable
as one is wont to have a shadow,

and the cliffhanger always drops, she said,
into death and into breath,

into or out of a plane,
or into a multifarious dingy room

of smoke and ink, card decks and currency.
I send her this: If you are unafraid

to walk out of windows, if you cannot be swayed
from that particular rush, I cannot stop you.

But know you’ll raise the dead and dance among them,
those applebobbers and acrobats. It was with her

I was taught all the ways there are to move
without moving, to turn table wine in plastic cups into

twenty-year-old port in platinum flasks. Oh, to drink
nectar to the dregs! I tip the Promise Land

into my afternoon tea, just as she used to
on cold mornings, and to christen moorings.

I wake myself up with cold showers,
sometimes in airport sinks,

once in the midnight tide of the Mediterranean,
pretending I could lasso the moon. Each dawn,

I am raw again and pink.

desire itself is movement

IN DEFENSE OF WANDER