Something I Wrote Down

When the whale is                    circling I will be             lying in the bottom of

           the boat committing      plagiary:          seven        words or more      wondering the water

frozen.

Surviving a heartless                            winter feels like elective            surgery: some pain

            I signed up for.              For example, why        not Texas? Or California—North State,

driving a road with          no exits          exiting a house           with no doors.     Pressing my face

            to glass. Why       not go somewhere with        no coldness.         Why not peer from the edge

of the boat,                       say to the whale:             I read about you.           Was you, I think

            as a girl who cut            heads off flowers.            Who examined the mud-

bank for tiny.                   There is no place where cold              cannot go. Perhaps

           a reason. Small                 as it may              be.                         A whale changes

the light of an ocean.       Seems to be circling         its own         small reason.

           A whale knows                  that stealing is                                    necessary for proving

one’s life is a collection                of activity. Much                                 like the falling of

           snow. An act                                  that feels much                       like an act. Confessing:

in all my life no one                    ever offered                             to build me

           a boat.                    But why read            into the absence of               offerings? Why not

think of my whale            as my whale          to examine or leave                 unexamined. I suppose

           there’s no kind way        to leave someone,                 suppose there’s no hold

in a boat. Just                a distance from              water. And life            is that also:

           collections of distance.          Would you believe        this began as

a love note?      Some desperate unclutching             of sound. But of           what and for

            whom? I suppose                  there is no place             where answers stave

coldness. I suppose                     I have lost that false          start. Gone plunging my

            hands in confession:       it’s been years      since I fell in                love with the light

of an ocean.       Since I turned down the sight              of a whale.             Years since I did

              a small something                with snow.