Wild

I am backing out of my life like a car in reverse.
I don’t need to watch it happening,
no one plans on seeing the unexpected.
The brakes are gone, lost fluid puddled among
the broken clouds welling up with black eyes.
Let me drive, I say, thinking, Settle down, relax.

*

Today I went to see the doctor. I was a doctor too.
He had not read much Freud. I have, I said, but
I learned nothing children hell bent on seeing
the universe through dark glasses could not know.
The doctor leaned back listening to my story.
He asked me what I meant calling myself “wild.”

*

I lived once among the grasses that drank rain,
I let myself soak in the falling drops that splashed
between the roots, where the blades lifted slowly
while I dreaded this loss of such propinquity
to sky and mountains shouldering it with care
that the earth resolved by melting most of the stars.

*

I tell myself to go home, I am of no help here
where the wine-colored skin of lascivious women
want anything but to be alone, unspoken of
or for, the shadows of the only street perplexed
in their sun-laced cane breaks. If I take her home
she will want what I had and will not live to give.

*

I know nothing. I will not agree to love myself.
How can you tell the truth and remain upright?
Of all the skunks and porcupines in my yard
on moonless summer nights, none are so feared
as the black bear chasing deer down the streets
to be seen on the front page of tomorrow’s paper.

(12 December 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander