408

Most of the time, I forget to keep up with you
and you freeze into the position you're always in
when you've been standing too long and have
no walls to lean on

Until I catch up and let you move
remembering I was looking for you.
You stretch out all your limbs
and have to follow me because
I have somewhere to go.

407

I even told you where I went the day
when I stormed out on you.
You, wearing your slippers and the baby in your arms

Now when we drive by the cider mill
and see the rock where I said I sat,
you wonder what I look like alone,
and even ask me if I wonder it too.

406

You can't understand why I can't read
the scratches on the coffee table
you put there with a fork.

I just don't want to admit I get it-
you're wrong every time,
but your eyebrows point stiffly down
in assuredness that makes you look
like a little girl about to cry.

Still, if I could make you know
that I don't remember when we met, I would,
so I wouldn't have to be the only one who leaves.

405

Anyone's hands would look new to you.
You've never traced the creases of their skin,
wondered if you found all of them,
would it look just like a hand again

You've only buried your own in dirt
and listened to them anxiously explain
why you can't live without them

404

How could I do anything
but watch the first plane I've ever seen
take off
even though now I live
just a mile from the airport
and there will be a thousand more

403

You couldn't fit into even the least clear pattern
when you learn the science of twigs on branches.
The pictures living on the wall
couldn't tell me what to say to you
this time when you came home

402

The box I'm going to bring to you is empty,
nothing you'll find to talk about like you'd hoped.
I won't wear an interesting shirt,
and my hair will be the same old way.

I will be calmer than such silence allows.
Tell me that I broke the rules.
Why don't you just ask that I go?
You'll want to cross your arms but they're already crossed.
I'll sit down and let you stand so that
you don't think I really wanted a reason.

401

I never tried to look for
the bells that ring each morning
by my house ten miles into the woods.

I'd rather just go in to town
for lunch with you in the diner
for the pleasant waiter's company.

400

Behind clean glass windows
things that can't be wanted too long
before they shrink into pebbles
and form together to one sheet of rock
when you feel them under your feet.

399

Turn off your alarm clock, pet your wife awake.
Did you know it's in the air?
The kids fell asleep to the television screen.
All the buttons broken,
you unplug it and they wake to your smell
that is enough for now
as your wife runs downstairs
to answer the phone.

398

You didn't try to understand
what it must have been like
for be to be lose at sea
for years and years.

Just said, well I'm here now,
and you were right to think
that made it okay

397

On the day so calm and warm
it made up for all of winter,
you left a box of candy
in the hole in my tree
like you could only leave
if I only remembered you
when the breeze was just enough
to tickle my skin

396

Hearing knocking on the door
for the first time since I came up here
couldn't shock me more than the first time
I opened my eyes nor could your
hand on the frame and some one face
nor that I let you in.

395

You don't know all the places you go
when you disappear for days
and return with one more hat
one less coat

There was a lot of world to see, you said,
you'd need me to be sure of nothing but the sky.

394

Underneath ice and snow
I could be with a woman with soft warm hands
and a mother's voice
not in its words or sound
but the heavy eyes that deliver them
telling me it's okay if I want to close mine

393

I was alone in your cupped hands
as you brought me to the stream.
I was an insect in your sunlit land,
and your palms felt softer than and piece of ground
I'd run my hand over when I was a girl
when it was always sunny even though
you only let in a peep of light through your fingers

392

We work in the building without and elevator,
and all come up out of breath
from the ten flights of steps
and sit down at our desks.

The staircase is narrow, the stairs red
and the echo stops short at the thick walls
only making the sounds of my feet,
always the first one there.

When the sun is out and the windows
in the office are open wide,
we talk about it
as if we don't have to see it again tomorrow.

391

If it's cold enough, I won't even take
my hand out of my pocket for you.

That's when you disappear,
and I'm still alive though I'm a child,
and I'm old at the same time
if I can stand completely still
and not have to feel my voice in my throat.

390

Having to apologize to you
when you get stuck
walking behind me in a crowd,
staring at the back of my head,
which I've only seen once
on a girl who now sleeps in a bed
that I used to wake up in

389

One morning, a man with a toolbox
in his hand knocked down my door
calling I know you're home
and I crawled out
from behind the couch

He said to hold these screws
and not to move
and listen to what I say

Spent the day building a new door,
then asked me where the kitchen was
sat down at the counter
and poured himself a glass of milk

388

I was sure you'd be awake to hear the rain.
You told me once that you lay still to let me sleep.
My nudge didn't touch you
as I heard footsteps outside.
You wouldn've heard them if you weren't so tired.

387

When you put a house over me
and grow to be as tall as it,
I'll have to call you by your name

to make it up to the top floor
where you left on your hair dryer
next to the dripping sink

386

I hope she doesn't live where curving roads
pile on curving roads

When only tops of state buildings are visible,
they never reach the ground

She couldn't bare a house
with the door underground
in the fall when the concrete turns the clouds heavy.

385

Tonight everyone at the pizza bar is here alone
except for you and I,
the only ones who do not speak.

I remember there's no one else across from you
though you can look at your hands all you want
I know mine are more alarming
when they reach for your reticent glare.

384

You only talk to two-eyed children
who think they can see through their feet.

No one believes your stories of when
you crushed cities with your hands
while angels whispered their demands
to you above the clouds.

Fifty years ago you'd listen to you
without distracted nods
or going about your day.

383

I grew up in the back of a moving car.
I never saw anyone twice
or the same building twice
or remembered a street from long ago.

The first person to notice me
owned a fruit stand at an empty intersection.
He gave me a peach for free
and told me not to miss my flight.

382

Even when I say the fisherman emptied the sea,
it'll be more true than what you tell me
will happen tomorrow when the paint's on the table
and I'm halfway there.

381

Old can't be the worst thing
on your kitchen shelf.
What good are shining legs
when brittle bones are only delayed,
and you have to know.

You don't like neat piles any better
when they catch your eye from the shelf over the sink.

380

They closed a road that I know,
said it's not that I know one less thing
but a million more

Because the birds don't notice the cars are gone.
Why would anyone look down?

379

I feel it on my skin
when somewhere, you touch a napkin,
a door handle to a cab,
a book you just picked up to skim.

My shoulder never knew your hand
through the coat of salt
that sanded me smooth
and slid me back under the door.

378

I want to be blind to things that break,
things that are loosely stapled down,
round things on rooftops,
things I only cared for when they were new.

I want to cover your face and watch you sleep
and love things that never change.

377

You'll be in the pocket of the earth
with my wallet and pen and that old doll,
all the things I didn't find
in the last place I looked. Forgave myself
because I tried and never thought
of them again.

376

You left for years at a time.
We weren't always under the same sky
or and sky sometimes when we were asleep
and didn't wake up surprised to see walls.

And then sometimes between years,
on the same patch of grass,
we'd sit and whistle to the trees.

375

The day I left to find you,
everyone turned identical
in the market down the street
on every stop on the train,
every character in the books
with the same face.
It was you I looked for so you everywhere.
I asked no questions and never searched again.

374

I live for the crack in your voice
that turns your eyes
to your feet
to the nearest door
in the middle of the desert
where I never even tried to follow you

373

You keep walking with rocks in your shoe
if there is someone next to you

And when they're planted in your foot,
you say that they were always there.
You never thought to stop.

372

I can't hear the rain on your window.
It never makes a sound when it lands on trees.
It could just be that it's coming down lightly
or that your house is just really far from mine.

When I used to fall asleep to taps on the glass,
I never questioned that you were too.

371

I took the long way back to where
you live with all my things,
but when I got there, just kept walking by
until I wasted enough time to go back home,
my candlestick on your windowsill enough to get me there.

370

Tell me how the seasons always
change just in time
when I'm too tired
to shovel any more snow,
and at noon you're still asleep inside.

The last sunny day we needed
to see the grass, and you get up early
to clean the gutters.

369

When the colors of the morning math the ones of the night,
we put sheets over the clocks
and forget how long we've been asleep

Then sit with each other in the street
that doesn't remember the last car it saw

368

Nobody ever know of our neighborhood.
No reason to drive through,
and the visitors knew everything we knew.

Even now that the trains run underneath
there's no big road to spread our name.
Just every few minutes the dishes shake in their drawers
for people reading magazines
and checking the time.

367

The hand that wrote the note to me
did what it said it would as long as it existed.

But it's span was not so long as my trip
to the other side of the world
and back home where a new lock was turned by arrow key
that seemed to fit the curves and wrinkles in hands
I didn't recognize,

366

You're as likely to be living in the shed in my yard
as you are to ever be at my front door.
In winter you will find it's too cold
to live in there.