Reasons Nobody Ever Called a Good Book of Poems a Page-Turner
Your first dog is ever your one dog
And no story has a happy ending anymore.
We have all wasted lives, sometimes we waste
Our own. Some nights are long ones, some
Never end at all. I don’t know how we can
fall in love, which implies landing,
Whereas love promises everything but.
That’s why I like to listen to birds call
At dusk to each other from the acacias
But then I recall it’s still daylight and I
Hear them in the absence of the trees.
When I am traveling by train over mountains
All I think of is the sea. My father was
Never quite so alive until he died and now
He’s immortal. Somebody must do the calculus,
Somebody must work out the logic of the logic
Of this spectacle because spectacle’s the last
Word anyone would use for dreams that don’t cease,
For the sound of weeping coming from the next room,
Only there’s no next room and we’re the only ones
There, though just for a moment and a lifetime more.
Listen, I will tell you a secret, the secret you told
Me once on the train into the mountains
On the journey to the shore, a time long ago when
We spoke and never met. That secret, which is ours.
Some nights are so long the old dog comes home
To us who remain there waiting and waiting
Even if we’ve never been here before, where we are.
Copyright Credit: Joseph Di Prisco, "Reasons Nobody Ever Called a Good Book of Poems A Page-Turner" from Sight Lines from the Cheap Seats. Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Di Prisco. Reprinted by permission of Rare Bird Books.