The Path Back

J.L. Adams

 

1
Suddenly, long ago we gave up
the old playthings of bird carcasses,
the filching, playboy dolls—
(seducing every bit of plastic
that came waltzing into that neighborhood)—
for a bare space in the medieval forest
where your chivalry made my knees intellectual
conceits, my mouth leak for the rustle of leaves:
            the bare-boned razor of your nails,
            and my petulant, bruised lips;
            I knew then neither of us were boys.

2
At least the city with a hundred years of aging
still whispers with its granite mouth
that we must all begin someplace.

3
The face changed.   No longer
the fragile, blue-eyed wonder of the forest;
but the immense and crazy passion of a poet—
compared to the sea, all proverbials,
            water me
                        water me down
                                    into the weak tea of summer.

And I was carved out by you, made empty
What did we say?
There is so much language.
I will not speak to you for all your words.

4
I considered men.   Women, too fragile
like Oliver's flowers and my back ached
from all the picking.   Men were frivolities.

For when I found home, a small house,
a small garden; the scent of lilac in the morning—
we slept cautiously; eager as hungry sharks
for a month in my bed, not attempting more
for fear the thing would break.

And once more I was the earnest child
seeking sainthood in a forest full
of goblins and thieves.