spoons

spoons

that’s how we laid there
in the park
on those days the autumnal vestiges of some other year
leached into our summer

savoring the copper tasting sun
filtered through the branches

where squirrels and starlings wild and nomadic
howled like men at how near we came

and the homely way that trees fork
in cervical contortions at the crown

now the trash cans at the beach
are full of beer cans
and whiskey bottles

it’s mid october

the heart is cumbersome
pushing up against my sacrum

your mother’s belly is full of you
has been for a lifetime

so much i forget
the way we forget the sound of passing airplanes
the booming overtones of their engines
in a wavering decrescendo
over the city

the strange immensity of it

i said to a friend last week
that you come in waves

psychic contractions as the months
crawl
on

some specter of each person you can be
carving out a place here beneath the stars

and when you’re born that’s what you’ll be
a specter with a narrow face
living into a wrinkled body
nothing more than what you’ll be
though all the world’s potency lies curled up
beneath your breastplate like
a coiled spring

the way you are now
huddled in your mother
huddled next to me
the way we lay there in the park