Nobody

 after Mark Levine

Yesterday was nobody’s favorite day, but it’s almost over.

Nobody was dancing naked on a truck idling in a driveway.

Nobody was dancing with a woman who wasn’t there.

Nobody was claiming his life was just a metaphor

for founding a town. Nobody was knocking back whiskey.

Nobody lacked remorse.

And on an old highway, macadam, long decommissioned,

that used to host caravans of families going to church,

I ran into a boy who swore to me

he was my son. I kissed him on the head, told him,

“Don’t run off like that.”

“This is the saddest moment of my life,” I said.

“This is the saddest moment of nobody’s life,” he said.

And as we pushed aside a tangle of leaves to enter

a stolen wood, we knew we’d be joined

by no one not dragging their fat bags behind them.

And the poplars began to shake, or we did.

And the leaves reflected light as they twisted

in the dumb wind—a school of fish

shot through by sun—and nobody was bothered

by a reality that had already come, and nobody

was longing for the one that hadn’t.

Learning to Pray Again

The barn was empty for a long time before this.

No reason for me to be here in the hay,

under the sum of dust loosed

from the rafters. What use is this camera,

this cracked lens? I want to light

an oil lantern that won’t light. In these times,

I need to write my name somewhere—

on my leg, on a sign. You start to sing.

Your voice carrying from the house.

The words familiar, though I cannot make out the words.

Your voice a field, though there are animals in the field.

A rain begins in the leaves and ends in the leaves.

A dog runs barking from the yard. I try to sing with you

but cannot sing with you. Every removal can be endured.

The Mistake

You and I have likely a very different understanding of why

We’ve made the mistake of coming here, of journeying

All this way, by which I mean peering through the window of this one-room cabin

Called now or earth or love, just to sprawl our tired limbs

On a stranger’s disturbingly beige carpet.

Nevertheless, I often find myself

Wondering about the not-so-innocent lives of oil paintings,

The awfully blue horses kneeling in their shade,

The way their impossible green goes on living, never standing a chance

Of learning how awkwardly similar they are

To us, slouched in an enormous

Wicker chair, where a vase clutching an orchid

Has just spilt onto a miniature table unfolded in front of us.

And I forget us, as this snow is forgetting this street lamp,

These power lines, as these unsuspecting farmers rust in their fields

And never know they were part of something too important to see,

A part of time, which is a part of me, a form

Of struggle, itself

Becoming struggle, ending in the courage to surrender

To a will remarkably not one’s own, a shock of crows lifting

From the hand of a tree, or a tree lifting from the hand of no one you know.