Pipe Dream

Pipe Dream

“Honest love will come near fire,” I cried,

“and counts all partway friendship a despair.”

                                                                William Stafford

                                                                A Bridge Begins in the Trees

Maybe the first puncture is word, 

and is aimed true through the thumping

muscle above and behind the cage of bone

and it settles as dark murmur, becomes a sunk

echo no one could pin down or explain

and the listeners only take notes

so that the next time they ready

your chart they’ll repeat your history

back to you and ask if there’s been

any change in your health.  They avoid

the scars where you shot yourself

day after day with the liquid

smoke, and you say, laughing one day,

if this were the Wild West you’d be

taking your ease in an opium den, 

and no wonder no one wants you 

sober they don’t want to see you 

peering out from the shadow

of your main stop and stare scar:

but I remember how she

hit  you and you went down

on that nail and it didn’t bleed

much and we all thought we’d be

saved and she wouldn’t be taken

away.  And she wasn’t and we

weren’t and after that

day you picked the scab clean

off, lifting it up and away from any

heal and adhesive and you let it

puss and fester and it became

your first son and you let it

change you into the bastard she said

you were and you took it

like it was your new name, as though

you were emancipated from

the sweet boy now forever off

and gone, the one you shot down

and he died, he died right there

on the braded rug in the living room, 

I watched him.  And some days 

when I have enough

imagination I can make it

back to the day before you killed him

how we’d walked down the old dirt

driveway and you picked a single

buttercup and held it under my chin.

It was later in the spring.

And it glowed.  And I did

the same for you and you glowed

and we walked then, glow to glow

unknowing and absolutely

unbroken and whole.