and sitting here i think maybe i ought to make lists
the romantic poem & the one i love, that i think
is lost in the early morning truck eyes--
fragments of poems i once wrote, following
me around in their unfinished lyrics, giving me
warmth and coldness with their half-taken breaths, and I,
searching for warmth now. fingers numb
like frozen purple plums in the icebox, like
faces when the blood seeps out, enjambing all over the place
to try and replicate? the state of my thoughts, to
try and write something worth following. and yet
everything is poetry, the books not written to be so,
the cars as they splash dirty water on the granite curbs
of earlier times are poetry, the man with his wet hat brim
is poetry, even the car that honks at me late night as
i walk home from the library, the figure that yells, "how's it going good looking?"
is poetry. the poetry not just the elongated pain of self narration
of wanting a you and not wanting you, there is poetry in
not saying anything. there is poetry in the underpass of the
highway that tore the neighborhood apart. poetry in the planners
and poetry in the families. there is poetry in the way the writer writes
about it one hundred years later, and you can see her hair up at the nape of her neck
her light notes and late nights in a library, her love, there is poetry
in her simple love. and maybe its like raab said,
it is not in putting all the details together. i do not know of an epic poem.
i do not know of a grand designed structure that could fit this all in one.
an anthology of everything from the center of the sole of your shoe, to the birthmark
above an eyebrow. maybe the pieces after all are enough. or maybe i focus
on the word enough too much these days.