spring

it’s late now, it’s early, no way

to know which season it is

of the total years of my life,

weren’t we only just nineteen,

tonya & i, wasn’t she only just

alive, long-limbed & cross-legged

on my dorm room floor,

wasn’t it springtime of a year

so unlike this one, thirteen

years past, cool nights in line

outside the nuyorican hoping

to make it on the list, wasn’t it

a friday night like this one

& the only people i wanted to love

were poets, earrings swaying

against their necks, dancing

in the dark of the room where we

all knew each other’s secrets, weren’t

we all just at that party, wasn’t i only

just eighteen, pointed northward

on a chinatown bus to that city,

to watch ai elo onstage at the apollo,

wasn’t she only just alive, smoking

with camonghne, asking me my favorite

song, cackling on the apartment floor,

on the air mattress we used as a couch,

how is it that it was long ago, how is it

i am on the other side of it, long ago, how

did i leave that city, that time when we

were all together, everyone alive,

wasn’t the dream to be a poet, wasn’t

the plan to live forever, our powers

newly acquired, newly in love

with what we could do, didn’t we all

belong to each other, to that work,

going after to the pizza shop

to recite what we’d memorized,

weren’t we all just there, wasn’t it warm

outside, wasn’t the road long & clear,

isn’t it early still, isn’t it late, & why

am i still here, did i survive or was i left

behind, & what season is it that we are

no longer together & some of us have gone?