by JS Gilbert
Only what will serve
her well. What otherwise
she may never see.
Cheese puffs implode
in your mouth. Clean-sheet
day is luxurious.
First principles, simple
machines, Newton’s
First Law.
Planets don’t twinkle. Some
fronds curl when stroked.
I love you.
Every morning we feed the birds.
As I understand
it, my purpose
is to capture,
in passing, this
construction worker giving
another a long-stemmed
wildflower, freshly plucked,
presented, accepted,
rushingly shoved
into a shirt pocket between
shifts, all draped
in safety-first yellow.
It all happened so quickly.
This bus, this love, this
rumpled weed.
There’s something, I think, a flap
or flange on a plane that lets its
fuel tanks hold hands across the
wingspan of a particularly strenuous
crossing, and I think about that
flap whenever I make you laugh, or
when you order the Chinese take-out,
and I pick it up.
I gave my dog a carrot.
She nosed it into the
ground, into the grass
and walked away, having
reached the end of some
dog-algorithm that tells
her a carrot is worth
saving, grass for safe-
keeping, and that I will
always wait to watch,
with two hands and a
face she’s allowed to lick.
i meant to write this yesterday
as space and time allowed
but my son came down in his baseball cap
and asked to watch a show
we’re trapped inside this iso home
together and alone
passing time adjacently
as he just gets more grown
so while my craft is withering
and needs attentive care
i’m not about to let this chance
pass by me
unaware
