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I said the moon and the moon said nothing.
I said trumpet muted by memory
and no one, not even a crow, rose
above that, though I could go no lower.
I was about to say water long desired
when the sidewalks darkened with the bloom
of rain, aspens shivering in that welcome wind.
I said who knows a thing about tomorrow’s sun
and no one contradicted me, even though
I was sure no one was listening.
I said the gladsome sigh of bedsheets,
and yes, I actually said gladsome, but I also
said car without muffler, I said glass
after glass of water, I said the crawl
of a ceiling bug, and for what?
And to whom? I said even this, and then
carefully chose whether or not to say
passagework, brick town, chickadee, pudding,
just as I chose which past to believe
and which long love song I would sing.
I said this might just be gorgeous nonsense
and meant it, at least for a full afternoon,
for one crazy weekend, for half my life
and all my semi-precious sleep,
for I said just about anything if I thought
a deer might hear it, a doe silhouetted
at dusk on a snowy ridge, a doe
musky and without symbolism
in a field I still gladden to enter, her tracks
barely visible in snowmelt by the time I arrive.
© 2005, David Graham
David Graham is the author of six collections of poems, including Second Wind (Texas Tech) and, most recently Stutter Monk (Flume Press); with Kate Sontag he is co-editor of the essay anthology After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography (Graywolf Press). He teaches English at Ripon College.
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