Patti

POEM WRITTEN WHENEVER

Not in the faux-comfort of slurried snow, your body
train heft, and not lost beneath septic water,
your ankle locked in a drain, not in the danger of never
letting go, and not answering that item
on that questionnaire meant to peel you back
like a shirt that’s intimate with rain,
not that answer, no, not that one, though why
your mouth knows how to lie,
nobody says or cares or sees,
crooked eye and downcast sky, clouds lush with vapor,
not there, though in dreams you
are welcome there, at least, though that life is cheap,
is sleep, is fretting with sleep
you’d be embarrassed to reveal
to another, to anyone, not beneath a tree
in a hammock and a song and fastidious greenness
lighting the night, when you are
alone, when you are knees
knocking plaintively, a back coiling
away from itself, as though in bone were better ideas,
and not a threaded darkness,
a red pain, a commercial speaking
of the one thing in all the world you do not know
you need, that in it is
peace, blessed generic dosages of it,
not in that weak glow, not in that curdled insomnia,
not anytime, not exactly, not now,
though it seems to be all
this instant, this chain of air, this name you call
your own.