There are no hydraulics.
Only a firmness and resolve.
I look down through the surface below.
Orange and blue fish swim.
Seaweed is apparent.
But this may not be what it seems.
I may have been a symbol.
No memory tells me this.
But the evidence is apparent:
in the cereal I eat, the way I comb my hair,
and a smile I wave about like a pistol.
My face carries a trajectory of hope,
indistinguishable from my hello.
Every handshake I conduct, every
embrace of another person,
grows like red trumpet vine, like the
weight of a long heavy dream
full of pewter and moss.
I change clothes quite a bit.
To be forgotten.
Even now as I drop closer to touchdown
I am pullng on fresh dark trousers, now
the ochre pullover covered with sleet.
Now my hands are again free to eat a donut.
Now I see it is powdered sugar,
not weather, covering my sweater.
The empty hangers bump against my temple.
My patience is running thin,
my hands look like small birds
about to launch themselves into the white sky.
There is a bump, my coffee spills onto my pants.
Maps and crosswords fly through the windows.
I repeat the names on the roster,
a litany streaming from my mouth:
Margo, James, Stengal, Patterson, Dion,
Diane, David, Davis, and more.
Is it less than thirty, more than one hundred?
No mattter. I am still a thief.
And I have taken things I cannot return.
