Stray

When he speaks of deserved and undeserved as more

than terms — how they can matter, suddenly — I can tell

he believes it. Sometimes a thing can seem star-like

when it’s just a star, stripped of whatever small form of joy

likeness equals. Sometimes the thought that I’m doomed

to fail — that the body is — keeps me almost steady, if

steadiness is what a gift for a while brings — feathers, burst-

at-last pods of milkweed, October — before it all fades away.

Before the drugs and the loud music, before tears and

restraining orders and the eventual go fuck yourself get your

ass out of here don’t go, the apartments across the street

were a boys’ grammar school — before that, a convent,

the only remains of which, ornamenting the far parking lot,

is a marble pedestal with some Latin on it that translates as

Heart of Jesus, have mercy, as if that much, at least, still

remained relevant, or should. If it’s true that secrets resist

always the act of telling, how come secrets, more often than

not, seem the entire story? Caladium, Cleome — how delicate,

this holding of certain words in the mouth, the all but lost

trick of lifting for salvage the last windfalls as, across them,

the bees make their slow-muscled, stunned, moving scab ...