Poem #3: In Which I Imagine Myself on the Corner of Munson and 5-Mile
I would give the world simply to sit in traffic,
with you, see hours exhausted as all cars around hiss and grog for movement,
And I want you to watch, know my world, know yours.
Trees, or what is left of some
(Like the wooden nails my father pounds, infrequently, at work),
grappling for the sun knitting their gashed skin,
minimalist, motionless, gazing at us,
yet we fail to acknowledge.
Speechless, without lung, I turn you to words.
Purple strewn on my fingers, a blue pen suicide,
lukewarm tea in cupholder, and chancing happiness at the inconveniences,
summer drizzle coagulating on the windshield– since I loathe the radio,
you speak. (And I wouldn’t want her to ever stop, no.
(She speaks, and my mouth turns to notebook paper.
She is the poem, young and unfinished.)
Your hands nervous, snowglobe-eyed, the way you say
Jehovah flawlessly, you break me. And I want
to be broken, by your name and His, reformed and replaced.
A leaf on the grass, scuttled across, hopping stem over heels on newly poured blacktop.
(Always an “if” with us and God.
Could God sit me down and tell me
to tell her.)
A sedative sky all around, gathering me, abridged, centered where
my lollipop stick bones, their cardboard packaged exterior too,
relax behind the dashboard.
(Look at all this air for us to run.
Addicted to watching everything turn. Watching her enfold
with the light. So in love with the God that made her.
Silent in the way things play.)
And you could put all your weight on my shoulders,
and I’ll still hold you up.