Time is a River
Perhaps I shouldn't be thinking of the same things
or waiting for my most comfortable sadness to write or return phone calls.
What else changes other than your number and the seasons?
Not every poem needs to remember us, but we—we have little choice.
I'd like to be happy and write nothing about happiness,
didn't you ask once?
He wrote one book his entire life.
And in French, which is the loneliest language.
The boy on the train lost his place
in his story, I could tell from his eyes and top lip.
Someone once told me where a sentence enters us
and it's the same place as regret.
So a book is a past made one way and we are not books.
I avoid the streets that look lonely with too many people
and the days seem to feel like days, yes.
Time for Paul Thek was a river.
Time for historians is just time.
I stand too long at the crosswalk in summer to watch the light change.
It helps me get home.
Sometimes it helps me get home.
Floating Wolf
