As summer hits us making walls out of the spring
and fall, so clothing goes: I live life shirted. May
no promotion use up my good name, may
we remember ourselves lakely, (and near
swollen up with water hearts), as sad musicians,
and as products of such tropes. Let lecterns hail us
for our perfect glottal stops. I invoke Seneca
the Younger. I invoke Seneca the people
because one Roman isn’t nearly help enough. We down
and up and so go toward and far from earth,
and are rewarded, and are close now to our fates,
which feels like holding shells up to our ears
and hearing them say shush but disagreeing.
As driver with her passengers asleep. The statisticians
know at least when they know something but
not well enough to say it. Life, I consent. I marry
daily and cast Smiths upon the world: this corner
Smith, this carport Smith, and though old Catholics
underground may be ashamed of this my naming:
day Smith. As patriarch. As selfsame life. This lot, aloft.
The prefecture of my land is a room
with dark walls in which a person sitting
may not think of other rooms. Scale becomes thus
difficult to master, so my way of gauging
has but three counts: it’s not a lot
of blood til you can hear it. Lakes are large
if humans drown in them. Lakes are medium
if bodies are someday found. Autonomy
becomes mine own and watches me hang jeans
from hooks; I wring out sections of regret
and so make pulp. I paddle when my paddle
hits the air. And so this emirate knowledge
acts in orders of retreat: I don’t mind water cold
and wet collecting on my skin: it humans me.
Therein rounds out this platform for some smaller
patria. Outside, I hear the Sunday people
buy things, and I keep my seat in this inhospitable
chair. To my state I’m confined, so I pass
time by praying name by name to all the now-
dead horses I was once too young to ride.
