This poem was published in Interim (Vol. 20, Nos. 1 & 2, 1999).
What I Can Tell You
This apple orchard
is the instant your temper came unhinged.
This well-known novel
the instant your wife took new note
of the dark-eyed man in her physics class.
Turn left here, on the street marking
failure to understand
classical music
inability to remember
important instructions.
Count what you love
now count what you’ve lost:
The oxygen you inhale
is the number left over.
Cradled in a crack in the sidewalk
a beetle waits for your shadow to pass.
You darken whole minutes.
This necessity
to crush the space beneath your feet
is the instant a window opens,
scattering birds from the rough sill.
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