Poem

Navigable Space

Cynthia writes:
And then, in the blue
light of Stockholm—
“grievous fumes of zebra”
she doesn’t quite write,
but we take her meaning,
we infuse it with
the leftovers of this &
that, grieving everything
that nozzled the new day,
the blue ubiquity of
failing cemeteries, long
forgotten in the grey
meadows, long bemused by
missing flowers—asters, gladiolas, stargazers—
on my word, I have
lost the very last I
I had to muster, confused
by gerrymandered time,
impoverished by Stockholm’s blonde
vigor, the backs of tourists
in blonde streets,
the cooing of pigeons over
blonde bridges, the last chance
for hello into a world
thirty years lost
in the rain, grey garden
on the edges, basement
revelations in the crying that
grew louder & louder,
the day
you said
you would never die.