13 April 2014

Knockturn


KNOCKTURN

                by Bob Hicok


Tiptoeing through the grass
not to wake the grass, sheet music
for the laments all over the field
like wings of moonlight, crickets
hushing their banter around my ankles.
then remembering they're an ocean
once I've passed, I enjoy thinking of solitude
when I'm alone as the spouse of living
with others, who are often sharp
in my experience and pointy, people
are like scissors, you shouldn't run with them,
I should go back and tell my wife
my skin is a photograph, a slow exposure
of stars she can touch
with the swirls, the galaxies
of her fingerprints when she wakes
and gives me the dream report,
decades she's been late for a test
or taken it naked, I would go
to that school, I would major
in Yes, the dark is my favorite suite to wear
where bear are also
sometimes, and coyote, and the dead
get to be whatever they want as far
as I can tell, the less I can see,
the more personally I take the little
I can make out with,
holding what I am held by, the night
and I almost the same smudge
of whatever this is, it is seductive
to wade into and slip away and not drown,
my life the only thing that has been with me

my whole life   




From Bob Hicok, Elegy Owed (2013).




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