april is: a poem a day for national poetry month

Mar 19 2009

April 23, 2007: Meanwhile, Richard Siken

Meanwhile
Richard Siken

Driving, dogs barking, how you get used to it, how you make
                                                      the new street yours.
Trees outside the window and a big band sound that makes you feel like

              everything's okay,
       a feeling that lasts for one song maybe,
                                    the parentheses all clicking shut behind you.
                     The way we move through time and space, or only time.

The way it's night for many miles, and then suddenly
                                                                    it's not, it's breakfast
      and you're standing in the shower for over an hour,

                                               holding the bar of soap up to the light.
I will keep watch.  I will water the yard.
              Knot the tie and go to work.  Unknot the tie and go to sleep.
                                                             I sleep.  I dream.  I make up things

      that I would never say.  I say them very quietly.
                                                  The trees in wind, the streetlights on,
                    the click and flash of cigarettes
being smoked on the lawn, and just a little kiss before we say goodnight.

             It spins like a wheel inside you: green yellow, green blue,
                                                                         green beautiful green.
       It's simple: it isn't over, it's just begun.  It's green.  It's still green.


More like this:
Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out, Richard Siken
Saying Your Names, Richard Siken

A year ago: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Amiri Baraka
Two years ago: Holy Sonnet XIV, John Donne

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