VINYL POETRY

Volume 8, August 2013

BIRDIE
Jay DeshpandeView Contributor’s Note

Dream of Disconsolate Strangers

In the dream you were etching something and it was
to be, later, me. And so we go on:
water, moving, makes its own hollow.

We teach ourselves, luck, and look: a moving retrospective
on, say, the thirty most recent nights.
These I carry along with me, and no more

are we able to break. From this as from land, from ocean.
At times we are touching and mostly
not. Mostly we are talking

and not hearing presences
in our blood. Listen: a man can apologize for only
so much. Not for the willows, their bends,

not for the wavetips, each time inventing new forms,
each time collapsing in a new hollow of self,
hollowed for holding. We keep from each other

just so much as begs belief. Just so much
as light, trestled in leaves descending,
endures a scampered play. In time this too moves on.

In time there is shadow and also
coolness. In time silence makes its own river
run through what has become our common day. And revoking,

never letting things come over, never
letting blood. What forgiveness takes
it takes away. We are on riverbanks, brushed-up,

shored from movement, in shock, shuddering.