Fences

I understand now the line

I crossed that day, like

a cuckoo bird who steals nests

to push the other yolks out, I stole

a string of words built for another

heart, a pearl of moons

set against a sky that was

hung up on clotheslines with

the laundry, the fabrication

of infatuation that was never mine,

but hers. For weeks now

I find myself sitting

in the backyard of

your consciousness, fences

and menageries of emotive

patterns flickering like

the last swallow of the wick-light

sputtering and quenched,

I trespassed; watching

old films projected on the walls

of memoirs yet to be written.

I would tell you to

take your time with that eyeful

of wishes blinking

like lashes. There will be

new things, maybe better things

than what I can fathom

or anticipate. But oh,

if you could see this, this

calloused vanishing of

all my tangles; suddenly my

body doesn’t fit me correctly,

missing the broken

bow, the bend of the willow

weeping into her own hair.

When I reach the center,

I’ll let you know the weather

there, whether there is

an allegory sun or moon

rising there, over my ocean.