The Write Launch, Spring 2020
Love Letters
It must have been
the tail end of the season
in your neck of the woods
when I scratched your back
and you scratched mine and
we passed our personal belongings
between the openings in our trains of thinking
shooting perilously across the continents of pages,
like walking a knife edge ridge on that mountain
in Maine we both traversed before we met.
Even now in this place of our own,
without our pens we walk a narrow path
the depths of the Cosmos
and the gods of place
on either side.
Fly Balls
I was never very good at sensing the trajectory of high fliers
And in fact once caught a fly ball with my eye socket
Ending my dalliance with baseball
But how quickly healed I was then
Today bones are liable to shatter
Bruises from brazen encounters linger
I still fear that flying hard ball, myself out left of field, looking up,
Balancing an awkwardly oversized mitt, with the bright sun
Of a good life blinding me from what’s to come.
Infinite Affair with Air
You are this
which is not
that,
that
which is not
this.
You owe such and such
to whoever and whom,
need all of that
to accomplish this,
and could never be those
because you’re these.
But maybe this once,
you make some amends,
excepting this, that, and the other thing,
as well as such and such.
“How long will this last?”
someone asks.
You are all of these things,
you reply,
but not all of those,
and tomorrow, all of those,
but not all of these.
(How dare they question!)
All I want to know is
Who am I in all of this?
Who will I be in all of that?
Are you anywhere always?
Or always somewhere at least?
Because I am here now and
tomorrow I may be there.