Feeling Deeply
If only you could choose
to feel deeply. Since you cannot,
I will feel deeply for us both.
I will bury our hundred summers
in a hole far away.
Like ten thousand miles.
Like I thought I knew
the way home. Like Bull thistle
Russian thistle blood thistle ghost thistle.
Like puncturevine and yellow star.
Like the wishes and curses
I keep in a tiny jar inside
the jar where you keep me. Like my echoing
pleas for mercy and comprehension.
Like the absence of your feeling
pulling me. Like a limping
waltz. Like a rainy man
forced off a homeless corner.
Like Irish whiskey and Xanax bars,
and tar heroin smoked on tin foil.
Like the foggy hawk wrecked
in the gravely shoulder and then
the dead doe in the curve and the fawn
dead on the next curve. Like the wrens
that made their nest
in the battery compartment
of the weed whacker
and the mother’s quiet black eyes
when we discovered her.
Like she pleaded for our mercy
and comprehension.
I will not wake from this
jasmine-scented death,
except with words
pushing through the soil,
into the light
of my bluest room.
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