a certainty and not the poem I meant to write

A Certainty and Not the Poem I Meant to Write

If there is only one world, it is this one
           –Larry Levis, “Decrescendo”

Rain, sounding like talk, like the dulled necessary words
of couches, of fireplaces and coffee tables, will be snow
by afternoon, and I will have forgotten the six crows,
the one mockingbird over the gnarled ridge.

I used to say I wouldn’t bother with hidden things,
I needed them too much – railroad underpasses,
lit houses, closed windows, shelves of books –
but I don’t speak this any more.

Dawn, wet and cold, shakes through the spruce on the hill.
The apple gives no note, acts hard of hearing, not willing
to show any emotion. I know this wind, and have felt
the air for it, have waited beside summer roads, wanting

only its freedom. I promised myself I would give it back,
but never did, swallowing instead. I would walk, silent,
through town, unwilling to let anyone know my secrets.
An empty lot, the one television station. The upstairs

bowling alley that rumbled over a bakery counter –
fluorescent pastries behind glass. The bus terminal,
abandoned, merciless, with its wall of magazines and
delicious, forbidden photographs. I could dream of cars

then, the shaking of my bed – a radio under my pillow –
horse-print curtain, brown and wild in the opened window.
A church once stood on that corner there. Hands,
hurt but free, would push their feebled requests

into immovable skies, reconciled to the thunder
of numbed words hurtling over land. The chorus
that would train their desperate vocabularies as if
the smallest details could lend themselves to immortality.

I knew nothing then. I asked no questions then,
but believed my life would always be as it was –
burning, ready, at any moment, for something.
Now those streets are lost to me.

The legs I thought would swell forever,
would burn always, are dry, are tired, finished,
though I don’t remember when this happened.
The streets I walk now are only streets, nothing more.

They lead in circles, are under construction,
their cul-de-sacs invite no one.
Rain, according to local weather, boasts of flood,
but brings nothing. My streams are lost among thickets

of maple, of oak, among fence posts, wire & rocks
& ditches, where two horses, heads to the ground,
undisturbed, their powerful jaws knowing perfectly
the world of grasses, prove their own design.

The streams push against my banks, deliberate
in what is given. Water rises
past my calves, my thighs, stomach, nipples, chin.
I flare both nostrils,

taking in this one last thing
my life brings. And then my eyes –
What I see there in the slow darkness is
exactly what I’ve wanted.