Five Postcards from Jericho

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of

stone, age old, my burnished and bruised, hair lingering, hand

caked, spongy as November, my dear Relentless, my dear Aging,

your voice tinny, dissonant as Stein shot through decades of war

and Fortrel, cocktails on the hour, Zeppelins over Piccadilly,

bombing blindly in the fog. Dear Skin, dear tobacco mouth. My

refusal, my merely geographic, my fibrous strings for you: your

abundant wit, your lack of shadow and still joy, joy, joy, nosing

the air. Each moment stretches toward you, your dry feet: I

carried them, pumiced and peppery, laid them where regret is a

biscuit thing to lean upon and sweeten, my hour of you, my cur-

sive thoughts, a pulpit beating under these ribs.

—

Dear Time, you swallowed us whole, swallowed us lovely, sharp

as bones crimping underfoot, my benign, my flotsam and crabs

thin as leaves, your smoothing, your sinking in. Mornings or

mooring, or wallowing Jericho: tapioca air indolent. I am still

there, supple and driftwood, you lovely, you loved me, your

memory dark and west, thoughts like tugboats stitching the hori-

zon, you pulling me, my pudding, my thin crustacean, my biscuit,

sideways in the late afternoon, your gaze, having so soon forgotten

the sharpness of mornings, the bite of your look serrating the

hour: my treasures, all of them, for the pleasure of that slice

once more, of our dangling, you and me, the lot of us in some

car, driving some hour, mapless.

—

Under a spiderweb, a tire, slouched: flat, sad-lipped, I think of

Newton, of the original apple, of all these clones since, all these

scentless descents, I shake my glass, shake again, melted suffixes

tinkling; observe all things natural: foliage unfurling like old

bills, wryly betraying your habits, like the dog who digs and

rubs, the dog who whines, who paws and circles. Why is pain so

much better than nothing? Or the mark of it more recognizable?

Why is saying nothing so much better than airing? Your one-

liners like blossoms, uplifting, your currents strap me to air, yes

I guess there is a little texture up here, and oxygen pure as baby’s

toes, which, if I recall, are sweet as kernels of corn, if I recall so

long ago.

—

To arrive is practice, conversation or conversion, a story over a

field, my sweet, of concrete or whispering, furrows of a path no

longer, not sure, was there, and snow combed in curlicues and

dog ears a zigzag through January. Sure you are witty, but are

you any less romantic? In my remembering, I have undone all

my beliefs, it is a luxury to lie unencumbered here, or there, the

bones flexed like tendons, the spine like a seahorse, the heart far

from a cliché still beating is innocent, though innocence is not

as supple as you think, nor as flexible, nor as perfumed, nor

convenient, or even clean: between things regret gathers force. I

remember the day you turned to me: it was cold and the coffee

was tepid.

—

Small red balloons thumbprint like waves green as the brush of

cedar, wind lapping your hoodie, blind strings tap the air. Such

lightness, the dog heading off, all the dogs of English Bay angling

off-leash. I would follow backward, lay old maps on your white

sheets, so sincere, I am in earnest for you: we won’t regret having

not yet knit our acrid puns and jaded barbs, nor having the

wind slip in under our belt loops, though I still refuse Gore-Tex,

and you bet I will not concede the game. Those small red balloons

like tulips in your eyes specks of amber, an amulet, an avatar,

my thoughts of you fully indexed, ready to step into.