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waking in a strange place
for a moment it's as if the last 50 years were a dream violence itself a dream a distant thunder of night and the first morning sound the sunrise song of birds is my real name. The orange cat returned two years after having vanished forever we imagined
so had got two new cats we barely recognized him transformed by disappearance as if time had taken his tail in one hand neck in the other and stretched him across months scruffier now torn ear a pugilist's nose but still we knew him and he rubbed and scented us with the corner of his mouth nearly hard enough to knock us over. we fed him went to bed and were glad and afraid less of everything children fear for if one beloved thing returns then why not everything? the next morning we found him long across the picnic table toe to toe as if leaping from one place to another but his eyes were shut not needing them and he seemed to belong there beneath the also orange sun but stiff my grandfather carried him to the garden. and now nearly forty years later I who have careened through this world so often through shipwreck fire self fulfilling all of it and have grown exhausted too as only something lost can be exhausted and wonder how I will find my way back to where the hands of life know me rise to meet the casualty of my sad face without the homing sense of an old cat and so perhaps maybe I will please ask your forgiveness if I stretch myself under you toe to bruised toe like a spent spring and preemptively for forgiveness if in the morning I do not wake after having mistook your arms for home. of the azure I dreamed
of flying lessons of the silver stars of the sky I dreamed them and again I dreamed them. over. over. one time I even placed a star on my forehead like so. so surprisingly frail a thing for a great aviator. if I am old now, battered by park benches and bus tickets it is not because I have fallen and again fallen. even the zipping comets will crash even the never-landing albatross someday greets the waves and a swallowing kiss. don't listen to the liars. gravity is not the enemy. what makes me old, what crinkles my hollow bones: so many empty windows with no jumpers. so many angels bound to graveyard stone. |
Poetry LogPoems are posted here when I'm ready to share them. I often don't title my poems. The date you see above the poem may be the date it was posted here and not necessarily the date it was created. To see more, click on the Archives below. Archives
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Unless otherwise noted, all content ©Paul-William Gagnon, Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs license.
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