everything

everything is not you, recently I’ve noticed
because like the dog I raise my head to look
whenever something might be you.

I look for you mostly in lists these days
lists of names, lists of numbers
messages left, missed calls, letters received

my friend Emily told me this is what she believes
that a dog will miss you all the time that you are gone
but when you are back, he’ll forget you ever were

I could learn to think like that, is what I think
it actually makes a lot of sense to me, the forgetting
when you’re around, that everything is not you.

two cans and a string

I have been living here now
for about one year
where there are mountains
and rivers
(without end)
and now everything is green,
like it was when I arrived -
though I feel sometimes
I am only just now
really arriving

once, then
everything was orange (yellow)
and people came up
in buses
from the city you lived in

soon though that ended
and the trees, bare
were revealed as wood
hard and grey

wind poured through
and cold, it was
sweaters on,
hat on

this winter
was like no other
the diagrams of weather,
air thin, but not like before
not full of wires

combinations of snow,
white/grey possibilities
those
were the mathematics of winter
unlike any other winter
any other place

window panes
woven in frost

the trees were glass
sunlight fastened
to their limbs and branches

but , slowly though
it vanished

by then
you were further away
and I wrote poems
about distance

they were two cans
and a string

and came the mud
wet black wood

some curious softness
a down, like pasture
green and brown
more colors than one

everything loosened
and I sat by a river
as it tumbled over rocks

I have been living here now
about one year
going into the forest, into
stores and houses,
riding rarely in cars
and kneeling in my garden
to pick radishes

now it’s almost
goodbye mountains,
hello not mountains

but it’s also
goodbye distance,
hello you.

Lucky

walking to the bar
I found a penny
on the sidewalk
heads up,
shining

I put it in my pocket
and wondered if it meant
I’d talk to you tonight