You can want whatever you want
and still another tenth of the iceberg
gives itself back to the ocean;
you can say things are perfect, right now,
exactly imperfect as they are—
the trees one rain away from busting
their seams—but then the daylight always
hammering itself into the next
cold-engine morning, clouds gathering
on a horizon that even the quiet
can’t keep quiet—and you can’t
be blamed for asking things to remain
familiar as the last word and new
as the next one, just like our words
can’t be blamed for meaning both
where have the last five years gone?
and there is one thing I want and we’re it.
You want to walk so slowly
under that canopy of singular leaves—
those days in a single day—so intent
on not disturbing the dust in the sunlight,
that everything filters down
bit by visible bit. You want
to quick cut down anything that comes
between you and the possible horizon.
What you want is a trail of freshwater
stretching nearly back to the South Pole.
So what if they can fashion a life
in an incubator? Give it some time.
Give it a driver’s license. Put it in traffic.
