How much sadness is allowable?
How will the crane hold his grey head and tap beaks with his mate?
How the hours tend and the money spends itself,
A few catch phrases and it’s gone.
I arrived before the sound of hollow snow, on the Eve of Spring,
Belonging as the sky belongs to the sea –
Once upon a time as the throes of earth and the comets of ice and coma
Mixed evaporating tails, trails of gas and light.
Slightly more distant,
Horse radish in the nostrils, creative burn, stage three of a long craft
Marketed as able to fly.

Able to bring humankind to heel.
The brisk walk, soup before bed.
Bring the young bucks to field and show and stature.
Crisp air, golden hours tempting the earth bound to dream.
To sing again as mimes think and think with their hands.
Our little warm breath, one in a crowd.
Our wish for better days ahead.
One in a thousand,
One in a hundred million sloughing off the old,
Singing to oneself, how old, how number, how become?
That sandwich of a better day
Packed like a child’s metal lunch pail
With a thermos and a clasp.

We each know the way somewhere, alone, cold
At the gap where narrative and self don’t get along.
A ways out in a boat,
Oars limp with the rest of no paddling,
Drifting as the ten foresaw the many,
As many as could line up, did so with their families and numbers and hope.

The soap bar slips from wet hands and sinks like garbage in the sea.
Barges of refuse bound for the great Sargasso plume of what we have made and discarded,
What finds us again, so sure of ourselves
With skin beginning to peel,
The unraveled yarn, the colors run to a muddy canvas,
A paddy burn by the shore.
Out a little deeper, beyond the boat a horizon is crossed,
A number deemed beyond retreat,
Fateful of river’s edge falling off to sleep in our clothes,
Early or late, scratching in our discomfort as if exposed before others,
Bled by ticks and leeches, therapy,
Ten fold and in telling, we are gratefully undone,
Subscribed, circumvented from original missions to this American shore,
This stretch of river or road where
The broad bend and the beige banks hang the signs of inhabitance,
Town center, rain and shine the doors are kept open for seemingly everyone,
Too tired to sleep, we order breakfast and hope for the best.

Not trying to hold the narrative together any longer.
Loose socks, button hole, belt loops loosened.
Age is the flavor of watermelon,
Black seeds and sticky, softening spit.
Lovers of Leonard Cohen, nude and blue, monastic, naughty and
Probably dead by now.
Where all the saintliest lovers sit around the pool, smoking,
Sharing some powder, some mineral livelihood,
Broad bottoms and narrow getting up with prints of the chairs on their backsides or
Burned racoon eyes of the sun and the drinks and the drinks and glasses
And sunsets and love.

By Rolf Stavig
3/16/2024