justwrite 10 may

so then I ate some ice cream had a nice time on another dime I ought to have caught a train southbound insideout there were doubts about the arrival platform the parchment having never been fully unfurled I hurled chance to the wind let it dance and spin and thought why it must be so and how the garden grows without seeds and plenty of weeds exceed decency and arrive unannounced no bells no freedom ringing there a mountaintop there the boys and the girls and no one looks back everyone keeps track and tells neighbors and savors a piece of pie-shaped innocence wedged into misshapen saucers the unidentified the tried and forgotten the liars and the forgiven we have been here before I have scored these notches on absent walls on doorframes everyone is so tall but I am the longest ago I am the answer to my question that starts with why and the letters you and I have gotten the signals cross here comes the train all dressed in wide bunks and funky chickens dancing with their eggs mislaid all along the watchtower the bluebirds and the tshirts the self-quoting researcher for this is how the fallacy happens this is the challenge of self-editing the right to know right from left and to imagine the best possible outcome I am humming the song I don’t know the words yet but the lights and music and the truth set free like a caged bird urges forward all those prefaces let us begin at last let us make it past the little roman numerals with their pug noses smudged into the bottom of the page waging consistency and hoping for the start to capital numbers the kind we see on our fingers lingering into the story until they are forgotten and only at the end we defend our choices our turns the chosen adventures the tenure track positions glistening in the past and the stretchedout distraction up ahead where all the flowers have gone where the songs and the other places to be all run free and wild and the mildest clouds cushion your fall shroud your gall at having imagined such a scene and in between breaths you feel the truth in your fingers and it is not exactly how you’d thought it would taste