Frisco

Frisco

Way up in Frisco, I lean against a car window with stranger’s eyes
People say they don’t notice I’ve changed, but I can see it
In the golds and the grays, in the looking ahead and the reaching back,
In the way the noise has learned to fall away
Into the quiet of my mind. There are details of other lives
I could have lived, houses where I could have cut melons,
Had my secret places. Cesarean scars all over this city
of births I could have witnessed. The hills go up and down
Like great sighs. An hour passes and the astonished fog leans back into the sun.
Everyone longs for puppy shouts of love’s excitement.
The air is damp and cold, and I am so hungry.
I spelled out your name in the fog of a cab window,
Zipped up my hoodie to my chin, full of diplomas
Professing my legitimacy and muscle aches from too much love passed by.
No deaths or separations today,
No applauded poems in me to be written or read.
Even the ever illusive river or whiskey that whistles me Dixie seems strangely dry.
I watch a cat follow something it wants into a crawlspace under a house,
And I think if I might follow something with that fervor,
It would simply be to lay down with you together in some way tonight.