It’s not not knowing how the end ends That turns the page it’s how you want someone To join you, the doves sun-dazzled in streets Act like lonely stones just some of the many objects To whom you proposed an arrangement of suppose What’s next, as some of us haven’t already guessed The eventual fiction of saying I wears thin The hand that shakes the rings to ringing It wears those rings that hand, lightning strikes An empty field, Pluto is a thought gone far Beyond the typical clouds just abstract enough To think those stones could learn to fly Given time, given mind there must be a way To love a child and not tell her the sun says all right Pathos of the grapeseed becomes delirium of wine A word delights the blank and other white lies
This poem is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.