Everywhere you go, children sneak along
to learn the strange truth. Their reach is unbound
but their core is too small to anchor much.
A flurry of fins and a hint of blue among the gray
but no fish. The actors practice grace,
but dream of fresh spirits to inhabit, they
are the opposite of ghosts. They haunt
the periphery of their own lives. Dancing
in the whiplash of life, sometimes they play the goat,
sometimes they are separated by rain.
Their curses wash off as easily as their loves.
What is real, insoluble as bone, will not budge.
Over your shoulder on the dry-docked red boat,
a blue bottle devours the light. We all get stranded
eventually. Abandoned by fortune, stripped down
to the real till we can run again. Some petals
or flakes or bits of snow, dust, a slow sifting of decay,
the years falling off like slaps across the cheek.
The breeze kicks some newsprint down the alley
and we are ruined.