First Contact

Things can change overnight
and look the same by morning.
It happens every day. The air shaking
with silent laughter that’s more
surprise party than conspiracy.

We had been anticipating difference
for so long, we didn’t know the difference
anymore—wouldn’t recognize it if we saw it.

There was talk of an ancient template
buried somewhere in a hole in the ground
or a hole in the atmosphere.
We were drawn here because we couldn’t
find what we wanted anyplace else.

We liked to pretend we were alone
wishing in an old-fashioned way upon stars.
But we weren’t alone, and hadn’t been
for a long time. It was a speckled feeling,
multiplied by a gazillion specs. All of us
waiting for the doors of perception to open.

The Wind Was Improvising

Rearranging things.
Putting paper party hats on squirrels.
Tossing dead leaves like confetti.
I could control the clock
but not the tempest.
My mind never pays any mind
to my protests and empty threats.
I get tired of gloomy things looming
over us—of always having to look up
words in the dictionary.
If pressed, I’m quick to step aside
and speak in a series of asides,
telling my secrets to no one in particular.
They say the most honest conversations
are between strangers on a train.
If only our family would see us like that.
We should set aside a day to honor
our obstacles, all the people and things
that stood in our way whatever the weather.
Thank them for their service and let them know
it’s okay to move on.

Frame

We wait for something to excite us—
to call or crawl out from under
the candy-colored shell of its appearance
and break the bright monotony.
An unclaimed edge peeking over
the assembly line of the horizon.
Sky, I remember; name, I’ve forgotten.
That blue—the something old,
something new of it. Back there,
back then, everything was road, road, road.
We rowed and rowed. We drove our stationary car.
We parked in the drive-in of a dream.
We arrived as if we’d always been.

(Image: O. Winston Link’s Hot Shot Eastbound, Iaeger, WV (1956))