The World
My waffling is not indifference,
but a sign of my love for the world
***
The sidewalk
Eye contact
is coercive
A city of downlookers
is the only locale
truly free of despots
***
Alone again
I work to wallow and muse.
Fears from last night stream
into my head now:
the lone stone needs company.
***
Oxytocin
Why hike the mountain?
An equal number of French Canadians
and dried fruit Americans
passed us by as we clamored up rocks, falls,
and into a great white cloud.
The Quebecois passed a hunk of cheese between them
as they rested on the first summit,
summarily becoming silhouettes when we had finished
our sandwiches and moved into the next stretch of white abyss.
Why hike? Why pursue sex?
For the strange New Hampshire diner after packing the tents;
the sprawled conversation between sleepy lovers.
My companions did not particularly like the comparison.
Miles of shale-like not-shale, green hills, purple flowers, lookouts
are beautiful and difficult for the passersby on foot
the reason we tell ourselves we hike and indeed the most important
but not why we go, in the end.
All I could think of was the wheat hair at home
speaking to me from tomorrow.
***
Alonefruit
Are we computational at our core?
Vaguerythought and leaves,
flattened to understand one another,
question whether there is truth underneath.
Birding with another,
the complexities attracting her
are lost on me.
But walking alone the morning after,
indistinct avians speak to me in chorus;
I smile then and now.
***
Dolma
Dilapidated grape leaves
strung out from the fence
leave us in suspence,
each year forgetting if they're perennial.
***
Globefruit
A yellowing slip with which
one can imagine seeds,
light, soft dark impressions
for cross-pollination
hidden by its still-green shell.
I hear you were sweeter
when my parents would eat you.
A 9th grade project,
a classmate fed us some tea
alongside you.
Kenya,
they said,
they spoke as we ate,
not listening, teenagers,
wishing for something sweeter.
***
Fruit
And our flesh was made one
two becomes one
begins as it's one
between us as one,
the poem is done.
***
elias