For Kent Bach,
The words were not ready,—at first
for innocent things like going to a party;
then papers, their job interviews
even eschewing of jury duties; and
before long they were failing too in
meaningful conversations.
They wavered,
stayed hidden;—too much was left implicit,
for you absolutely would not be kept waiting
at the door without reason.
It made you sad and individual, kept you
out at the coast toiling to write
long letters of frustrated lament;
and between you and me,
to call them incomplete wasn’t really enough, was it?
You being to think, was it something I said?
and strangely for the first time we agree,
that our thoughts could never be found
malformed as our utterances can be.
‘Two men carrying a bed.’
Talking to the walls, I know
that I was tired and made
to move house without the cover of day.
A wise friend helps with the burden
on foot by quietened cul-de-sacs
looking like burglars in labour,
sleeping-frame lengthways between us;
—unsteady on the street beneath
silent docile homes, broken only
upon our conversations
in their pale and faultless wintered rows;
no moving parts besides the furniture,
cold and heavy in our arms.
The bed’s silhouette held easily
as a table or bookshelf face
against the grey-lit picket fence,
and I consider the support
each weight could have lent
before my sleepless nights into mornings
on the porch that I’ve just fled.