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