June

FORGET

I just want to tell you
what I read about Einstein’s brain,
how it was scooped from his skull when he died,
chopped into cubes, soaked in
formalin, only to go missing
for how long I can’t remember
before surfacing in Wichita,
floating in Mason Jars, jars
from which I have sipped sweet tea.
Something ailed me or was fractured more than
whatever its usual status was and there
I was in a doctor’s office, waiting, bored.
But that was a long time ago.
Let’s say it was my ankle,
ruined in some spectacular
moment, the sort one is amazed
and dazed by, walking away,
the warm pressure of conflagration
leading you away into the mausoleum
of night. Let’s agree upon
this story. Let us make this compact,
one to another. Doesn’t it seem
important, vital somehow,
that I forget what then was wrong
with my life, flipping through the disconsolate
pages of ragged magazines, all their never-
to-be tried recipes and exposes and sex
secrets for the terminally dull?
Feathered in my boredom,
my ankle throbbed
whole dreamless nights away.
Except neither ankle keened
and most nights slept
like peace if not loneliness.
The stars through pine trees
were never visible. I looked anyway.