at some point the orderly derivations will stop in their tracks
the logical if-then progressions will uncouple
and if if if and then then then will disperse free ranging
unalloyed

the slow twirls of ifs like dandelion spores asunder
suddenly illogical
suddenly improbable
the uncoupled stately and unpreconditioned

then

anything really

the way to walk is to hold their right hand in yours
stand behind them and hold your left hand on the belt line ready
it's actually dangerous if you let them hold onto your shoulders
for balance

i will have to be ready to pull my father up by his pants
in case he overbalances while he figures out
how his feet and ankles and knees and hips
work together in a walk

yesterday i watched him relearn his fingers and his grasp
and his arms in a room full of blocks and balls and bands
each inch moved a devotion

how slow, i can attend to every one of your hairs

i am not audacious enough to call your name out
to the universe
i've heard that story of litanies
the mantra of your beloved's name chanted
until the universe resonates with that joining
it becomes inevitable

i am not audacious enough
to presume upon the universe
you are too lovely
and solitary

i love you
there i've said it

what you will
if it is a line

i've crossed it or a thought
i've thought it

simply

enough

today i sat with three children
yes i'm old enough to call out a child
feeling distinctly and qualitatively different

and they sat there full of dreaming
possible and probable both still amorphous
and pliable equally
reachable with the same hands

care, oh care
sharp and untempered
guard your veteran mind
unfetter what you know from trammelled paths

this is your dare

a child gazes at you with i dream

last night we sat talking about our past together in a strange kind of reminisce
what was, what could have been, what is, what may be
also what may not be
all tenses conglomerated a snarled string no longer a line
you were sitting across from me
voice soft and reasonable recounting razing
behind your eyes and the certainty of burned bridges

(if you speak of possible in gradients of distance,
also speak of no longer possible as contracted horizons
folded and put away)

this kind of determining, the pruning of a strange tree
still drawing nourishment
braced and wired
still growing its strange way toward the sun

what of us
of all the candid inquisitions was the question never asked

i cooked dinner because i wanted to
and you let me harass your kitchen with bits and smells until it was ready
that''s how we inched toward not asking
everything a hostage subject the fixtures the placemat the magazine you kept

all this time

all this time

by the roadside there are things for sale. under large yellow blue green red wedge umbrellas on a white stalk slipped in the joining of a plank box. hand lettered signs, quotation marks and apostrophes. sweet corn, and further down depending on the season starapples and indian mangoes in deep rush baskets or a red plastic basin. where there are sidewalks. and sidewalkers.

today i saw:
crab stacked and tied with blue straw
yellow diesel fuel in coke liter bottles
eggplant, okra, squash, and stringbeans chopped and packed in icebags
aquariums of cold drinks with varicolored squares of gelatin
little sweet breads
dark glasses and cellular phone casings
bobbing headed animals in a row

to amend your way from here to wherever. i wonder what decides the spread.

on the way to where would you stop for..., and also how far would one walk for one of these? and back?

do people here want these, or is it a you never know, the way cowboy hats and helicopters, mattresses and roses are snaked between cars at the stoplight. so much hope there, you never know.

today was a rainy day. i like rain.
i like the way clothes begin to stick to the skin in the rain. and its sound like breathing makes me want to run, hips open, legs light and long, on the balls of my feet poised to fly. maybe i'm a bird that flies in the rain. a wet bird.