Briefly Lapsed

(Artwork by Sarah Tell at Distress Press)

Perhaps there was a tidy spare room on the banks of the Russian River
that you fell into (the room,
not the water),
and before there was such a thing as statistics of the dead and the hospitalized
there was time for scaring up some specifics. All these soldered-together clues of what
we used to chat off-and-on about,
or (take it,
leave it, too) it was in the keeping instead of only the
having that
laid you lower than you
should’ve known. Then there were the rust-laced bells and
the mornings of bright sunlight swept through latched French windows
to bitch about and contend with. There are other armies,
sure,
in the baited switch of decaf for longing, but who trifles with the mechanics of it
gets another paycheck or merely a roof overhead in exchange
for their life’s steady allotment of time spent.
Someone whispers the names of factory towns gone defunct
in the culled mess of shriveling surroundings,
and the lap of post-pluvial gutters puts air in your chest
still. Empty towers and citizen-less streets,
some homage to silence poured with garbage-truck echoes into spontaneity’s now-somber purlieu.
Hair at attention,
out of stock all over, we contend and endure and wait and wait and wait — something
maybe important
forever lost
like silent fifths between chords
never quite in search of a resolution,
yet always insecure and crenelated with worry, propped on possibility’s flimsy (if not cutthroat) edge,
like mining’s crude blots on an otherwise…