Personal History

This was in the year when

a ship took leave of the water

& floated out across the clouds.

When the clouds became

the opened palms of the angels.

The year when the angels strung

their wings across the telephone lines

like laundry drying in the sun.

Only there was no sun.

Not that year.

That came later,

when the children turned first

into horses & then into ghosts,

when the rain fell in love

with a poet,

when the poet forgot his own name

& then the names for everything else.

That was a good year.

A year without names.

A year when I learned to kneel

without my knees ever touching the ground,

& where the gods all prayed to us.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

I should start at the beginning.