On The Other End Of Eight / new poems 2011

As I Hold Water Moccasins In My Aging Hands (for Jim Harrison)

The shape of the journey:
irregular, irreversible - a river
flooding its banks to swallow
old LPs, rusted shed tools,
and, the love of a woman
now wearing another face
as I hold water moccasins
in my aging hands
and piece together my youth
from Polaroids, vague memories
of a trip to Syracuse and
the smell of smoke coming from
a neighbor's burn barrel
on summer nights four decades gone -
there where I was no more than a shadow
in a hooded sweatshirt chasing fireflies,
still unaware
of the speed of light,
of the number of feet in a mile,
of Newton's fortuitous falling apple -
that even gravity cannot hold us
to this world forever.