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).