I searched for it
beneath the willow tree
that flowed by the stream
that laughed at my childhood dreams.
I looked for it
in the pool of tears
from the ****** at the bar
and the bloodstains on the jukebox.
I sniffed the air
in the bathroom
at the back of the bar,
thought I smelled it,
but it was only **** and *****
I looked at the altar
in the church
and the graveyard by the big oak tree,
and I thought I saw it
between the cracks in the headstones
where the plastic flowers lie.
I crawled under couches
and pulled the refrigerator out.
I looked in the cat’s mouth
when it gnawed on a sparrow,
thinking maybe the cat
or the sparrow had my answer.
I stepped on sand
by the Pacific Ocean
under that March Hare moon,
listened to the waves whisper,
hoping they’d tell me.
I tasted it
in ****** Mary mornings,
spicy and red,
tomatoes and *****
burning my throat,
scarring my tongue.
I ran miles
in alleys, in every direction,
with the walls
and the **** of the city pressing in.
Footsteps stalk
like angry ghosts,
thinking maybe
the chase itself
was the answer.
I saw it
in dilapidated motels
that smelled like dollar perfume
and despair.
Thought I found it
running down a sewer
where the lamplight
fell on the cracked concrete.
I argued with strangers
over Styrofoam cups of whiskey,
traded words for wisdom
that they didn’t know
they had.
I listened to John Coltrane
and Miles Davis
at three in the morning.
Saw the amber notes
hang like phantoms in the room,
tasted the melody,
harmony burned into my brain.
I smelled it
in libraries.
I felt the librarian’s *******
and inner thighs,
hoping, praying
it might be hidden there,
or in the old books,
stacked high with dust
and old confessions.
I tripped through homeless shelters,
stumbled through parking lots,
past the blinking neon signs,
wondering where the magic went.
When I was younger,
I chased it
through marriages and divorces,
through laughter and screaming,
moaning to spilled drinks
and broken promises.
Through nights
when the ceiling fan
turned slow
as a dying clock,
I dug dirt
in the Iowa farmlands.
I asked Hemingway
and Steinbeck
and the brown spider
that smiles
in the corner of my room.
None of them
said a **** word.
I walked centuries
in my mind,
climbed stairwells
that smelled like hate and ***
peeked behind mirrors,
and breathed in the smell of mercury dimes.
I listened for it
in the crack of doors,
in the hum of streetlights,
in the hiss of morning buses
as they drove the city awake.
And finally, finally
I found it
on a little shelf
behind my heart,
curled in the corner,
furry
and dreaming
of cattails and canned tuna.