Poem

Awareness

1. Morning dew

Morning: be.

Apparently
this is how I am to be:
a dirigible’s existence, clumsy
and weightless. Things should
be
just so
as I like them to be.

I am obsessed
with the periphery
of my vision:
what is not there
but was.

I,
not to be
desired; whatever
I am meant to be
but was not meant to be.

My mind
is the slam of a screen door:
eager and exacting, what is
not there and what was.

My soul is
irreconciled with this life.
The light of each new day
cannot forgive the loss
of love in me
each day.

2. Evening falls

Evening: come.

When I was a child
I climbed out of my bed
onto the sepia-colored carpet
and walked out of the house to the end
of the walkway and listened to the night.
I heard only the tumultuous crash
of Purgatory Falls, the water
a steady cascade into a green pool
with a muck bottom, overhanging tree
branches, streaks of pollen and the dance
of waterbugs and mosquitoes. When I was
a child it was easy to forgive and want to be
loved.