Reckoning

harborcoat is a weird word to

start out a poem, but so is writing

about seven Chinese brothers if you are

not familiar with that language or culture…

 

it’s easier to apologize about rain

in the south-central part of the

country, but neither you or I can

do anything about it…

 

you could try persuasion, pretty or

otherwise, but nature remains unswayed

 just like your ex-girlfriend Annelise,

time after time, it just doesn’t work…

 

there is no second guessing,

the letter you have for her is never sent

and she doesn’t want it anyway,

she used her Polaroid camera to show

you the burnt remnants of the last one…

 

and that’s why you don’t want to go

back to Rockville, that little part of

America is in the blast furnace of the past

and the dead storage of your memory…

 

the reckoning weighed and measured you

and you were found wanting