Not high enough for suicide
                              or low for easy landing, save for
                                 the cinematic timing of a feline 

                                            leap onto the back of a passing 
                                                    semi. Not that I’ve considered it—        
                                                            but my eyes have, 

                                                & in this way I’ve sent my energies into 
                                                        the possibilities, 

                                                                                    like dogs after 
                                                                                the Missing

                       into the ravine of time. As a child, I watched 
                                                                     the funnel 
                                                                   cake-fat catfish disappear under the park’s 
                                                                                                     footbridge 

& reappear on the other side, as the twin 
     barracudas of headlights current 
                                                     now into the black 
                                                                                 expressway like nostalgia. I’m ready to say 
                                                                                       that whatever holds 

                                             our attention is a brief
                                             god, that Americans have many, that lovers can be glorified;
                                                                                                 that stopping with my hands 
                                                                                                 in my ratty peacoat pockets 

                                                  here is reverence for my own life, even if 
I measure it against its impact 

                                                   on the pavement. I don’t know 
                                   any songs the wind also doesn’t. I sing them—
                                                                                       I better get 

                                                                             home. I walk buckled 
brick back into the neighborhood, Sunday quiet. Framed in the windows
above the back doors are green bottles collecting dust. Sometimes I glimpse 
a silhouette & know someone’s home. The more we speak of the world, 
the more it becomes 
metaphor. So let me stop here—

at the back gate of the dark yard that surrounds the house filled 
with light & the music of a body’s weight going 
                                                             up the stairs. I could almost believe the world 
                                                  would give me another 

         life by the way a streetlight files 
                                                 the house’s shadow,
                                                                          darkening down

                my boots.