Darling,
one way to think of it is
I
required absence and you
life-long
a room just left. Except
you
bloom not empty half-light
but
a stand of trees at the edge
of
the meadow where my life
leaks
out. Static is the soundtrack
of
the cabbie’s dream but oh
how
we love our troubadours,
sad
acoustic boys and girls,
sunshine
in their throats. Some
days
it takes all my concentration
not
to pick the lettuce that lives
down
the street. Then I wake
with
tendrils between my fingers
and
once again I’m feigning
innocence
on the one hand,
aping
grief on the other. See,
I
would eat the lily from under
the
frog, drink the river between
each
strider’s wake. It's my way
of
feeling productive, of not
too
terribly envying the swan
still
as a figurine on her cloud mirror
until
the trees go back to normal
which
is a kind of sleep instead of
clawing
magnificent at the sky.
Lisa
Olstein
