Along the highway, green-winged cicadas
splayed themselves like fingers on car windows.
They, too, are working out their own
questions of return.
What of another life do they remember,
and if they do, what is the brightest point?
Like everyone else, I move not only
at my own pace, but at the pace the world dictates.
LIke everyone else, I have been sometimes
a wanderer, sometimes the ache for a fixed point
which is no longer there. We approach the middle
of the year, after which we can say,
look, it is almost winter. In the meantime, I am still
figuring out the meanings of silence,
what it might take to bargain with
a future whose nature does not change,
even if it seems to. I can remember a time
when all I wanted to do was fight it.
Now I want to be the first one to go,
before other lights are extinguished.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
