Bones of Birds

Prose poem maybe. What I'm thinking about now.

In my childhood room the bed is pushed up against a window. On days it rained, I would lie on my front and watch the trees bend so close to the point of breaking. I would stay put for hours. I always felt as if I had a song that I was holding in my head, but it would be many years before it ever made its way out. Things are all different now. Walking a mile in the rain to a job that barely pays, making love in a twin bed. Saying: had too much coffee this morning. Forgive me.

We lean back on the beaten down carpet. Neil Young playing, hey hey, my my. As I get older all of the adages and sentiments that seemed simplest or even reductive to me in the past have begun to feel complex and startlingly true.

It’s different with someone you love.

I’m turning over images in my mind, inspecting, interpreting. And it’s the nostalgia that’ll kill you. The boys with their Beatles haircuts, the girls with their prescriptionless large frame glasses. All beautiful in the summertime, wandering from place to place. Are these the same two legs that carried me across schoolyard playgrounds? That kicked out against the sea? Some nights it feels like a fever that won’t ever go down.

But you can’t pay it any mind.

And there are some times when I can feel myself disappearing. It is slow but it is real and happening. And it’s the large unanswered question: What am I going to do? With my day, with my life. I am walking in big looping circles in more ways than one.

I’ve been here before

and I’ll probably be back again.