OPTIONAL POETRY

This night another
night bus night

impossible to discern
its path

while on it
everything seen

cannot be touched
or not for any

length of time
as it’s not also

on the night bus
and the night bus

doesn’t stop.
Strange to go

right through a town
with its warm lights

and conversations
and glints of connection

halfway out the door
but the night bus

moves on always
the party’s in the other

room the party’s
in another place

the night bus
moves on to some

secluded spot
some unmarked stop

and lets you off
and then is gone

and gone as in
was it ever even

there not just gone
as in departed–

In the woods a suggestive
wind the trees creak
like doors but opening
or closing ones I’m
unsure and the moss
the grass the ivy
shags that grace
the maple trunks
and sway are all
more green than
they have any right
to be and buds appear
on saplings like tongues
that won’t be held
and this light rain
gets caught in wind
and sun and rises
blown like sparks
the sun on the wet
asphalt white as
heat and this is
no known season
this is something
beyond it’s all
in play even the staid
saucer faces of
the pink camilla
have shown up
early just to gawk

Night drive just like
the last night drive
just like the city
lights that paint
the freeway pavement
archetype of neon

if only a heart
could be trained
to sit or stay

I take it with me
driving home about
seventy it’s late

which compounds
its velocity but
a heart can’t
be trained

and every night
we both race home
with only one
of us arriving

Now an awful dream
anemones growing

out of my skin
how the subconscious

processes drowning
and I watched

cells dividing
to herald more

arrivals two
four eight

the biologically
plausible nightmare

of a scientist
deep deep in

sleep and under
water.

The day after
the day leaving

in the early
dark the radio

DJ playing soft
songs to ease

the hangovers
even the broken

rhythm of the
rain is subdued.

I dreamed you
wrote to say

that a tsunami
almost got you

I should really
probably write

you back
and everyone

else it’s just
hard to grasp

that these daily
dull laps might

seem comforting
to someone

who isn’t
so weighted

in place,
so yes

I’m dragging
a bit but

it takes
adjustment

being so long
a sail,

so suddenly
an anchor.

Venice, again.
I had forgot

the earrings
I bought there

and then lost,
one after

the other,
maybe too

careless
with things,

but never
with feelings.

I remember
them, clear

as the Adriatic,
and it’s raining

there while
it’s raining here,

and just how
many places

has this rain
been? Counting

the same place
more than once,

of course, as
no place

ever stays
the same.

Here is a progression
of leavings: leaving too
late and with the wrong
person, leaving too late,
leaving at the correct time,
still with the wrong person,
leaving alone, leaving too
soon, leaving before coming,
that is, not going at all,
which is forgoing going
through motions, could be
forestalling, but what
could have been in time
gets outweighed by all
that was, or wasn’t–

The sun’s still out,
is this fog or smog?

Something fell,
perhaps a cloud

to Vermeer up
the landscape.

Can’t be sure
of anything here,

the interstate
spanning the valley

now floats high
on condensing vapor.

A growing thought,
a blue-eyed wonder,

sticks around
under the soft

chambray sky,
the day

refusing to cede
to the night,

and so this caprice
lingers longer, too