What can I say
about changing places
and the weary night song
piled outside every window?
It can weigh you down
like happiness, like rain,
like the notion of destiny
or an obligatory farewell
that you carry strapped
to your shoulders.
Believe me, if it would help
you see things in a different light
I would only write poems
about love and dream gardens.
The sun and the fresh air
would do you a world of good,
and I would make it rain just enough
to spruce up the flowers.
I would read these in a French dialect
and part my hair accordingly
like a slight, wry smile.
But the truth is
I could never understand
why a single language is not enough.
Breath blown into an empty bottle
and tossed into the nearest stream.
This human need for a philosophy
of words when a howl would do
much better; after all, we are only dogs wearing a fancy leash and a collar
of home we sometimes call a house.
Places change because with the years
we change even less. We’ve spent
too much time in the dirt
and now everything is relative
because it is under our fingernails.
Scrape away rinse and repeat and still
the hounding memory of nights
under the stars, backs to the chill
of dry ground and nothing but a long sigh
for a sheet to pull up to the neck.
How many sighs does it take to make
a death? Just open your eyes
when the night peaks at its most
exotic and serious black.
We’ve been here before, you and I.
Heard sounds that would never
make sense out of context.
But there was no need to ever
translate what the crickets said.
Was there? For us, once, never a need.