The Recurrence of a None the Less Trampled Groove

For C. B.


1.

I enjoy watching you run down hills
as I read your ‘Philosophy on Life’

but keep wishing I could hand you a sled.
Or if that is too thick a plastic

to carry, too much between you
and the real ground, then maybe

just sneak a Slip N' Slide into your shoulder bag.
Not to help avoid the bumps or mud puddles,

but give you the option to take them
all at once, perhaps when the hill

proves to be more than you
bargained for. Or maybe just so that no matter

how bad the bruising, you are left with enough momentum
to start up the next rise. That hopeful moment

of 'this won't be so bad'
that helps to squelch the thoughts of a warm bathtub

and bucket of booze. It is the residue of feeling
forgotten, my things or I,

that keeps me moving.

2.

There is a place
where all the good of cigarettes

and coffee and booze
has been forgotten

and people stay awake for days
without the help of television.

The last time I was there
an arm chair rested its front over a fire

and a man used a fountain pen
to pick chips of painkillers from his teeth.

You may go there

I mean-
you are welcome.

To go where all the ex-mothers gather
and the new grandmothers come

to rub their nipples.
And rip their jeans.

None of them aware
if any of it began of their own accord.

3.

As I was being born
two men sat quietly on a bench.

One looking as if he knew,
in much greater detail than the other,

the effect electricity has had upon the idea of a home.
When a passerby waved at them on account of the weather,

the man who knew looked away,
the man who didn’t took a pull

from his cigarette, and the passerby smiled at the area between them,
that stammer between light and dark- filling with rain,

This has happened since,
of course.

It had happened before.

But that moment is somehow my own.
Like the nights I spend awake.