PAUL GUEST
APOLOGIA
The homework swallowed the dog
and I left my burdened
wallet
in my other life, in
my other car,
which is a Soyuz,
Russian
in only the ways that
matter.
And what those ways are,
well, I forget. It is a good thing
the constellation of
atoms
you recognize as me
has not yet sought to
diverge,
to divorce itself
from this idea I keep
having
about being alive. That:
it’s lucky my lungs
fill up with air
each morning like
little
buckets brought to the
pebbled rim of the river
by a girl who thinks
about devotion
the slow way back to
everyone,
to endless thirst.
And that girl is you,
though you’ll bristle
at the very notion,
and rightly so:
what sense does it make
to speak
of heartbreak
for even a moment
in this world
cluttered as it is with warehouses
of cheap peanut
butter,
skinned with little
puddles of oil,
what sense does it make
to ask you
why I am constantly
dreaming I’m late
to your life? What sense
is there anywhere?
In what tree sings the bird
to which I spent all
spring
teaching it the mimicry
of your sweet laugh,
but not the burr of
your anger,
like a stone,
like a blade,
and not the worried
ways of your tired voice.
It’s late again
and the moon
teaches me stealth
and borrowed light
and lowered gravity
and before sleep
floats me afar on its dreamless river,
let me say
my apologies
like a prayer,
to you,
let me miss you as
long as I’m alive.