Even though the pine tree branches sweep us on home—there’s
Also Not Thinking. A diagram suits a raft of green
Dollars that bleed downriver . . . that’s all we can remember
Anymore. A coke really is a coke, and “no amount of money can get you
A better” one . . . I mean I slept under the trailing
Reputations of loft designers posing as painters
And East Coast naturalists . . . The air currents came and
Drew down the apertures—we opened them back up . . .
I suppose we can go now, have brunch, walk away
Lighthearted, kiss our models, paint the landscape with
Lots of champagne. It may be time, you know, to fade
Inside a book or three, scruffily bearded, or with many liver spots.
I press this button and a happiness balloon envelops
The ghost shields of my present/past speculations—staring
Out through the greenhouse door at the gravestones.
Hot as a jungle, my thought of each dollar becomes
Like the light of my toys once abandoned on the beach—the color saturation’s
So exceptional. Then it all sinks into the sand (along
With my orange dump truck), a gull nearby pensively
Watching. I sold a dollar once to a kid for six quarters
(“Any of this paper’s better than that crappy metal”). There’s a lot of time for this kind of
Accumulation of the finer things when you’re one of the grownups. You might
Even believe you’re living real hard, making a difference (but you’d probably
Be wrong). Ah, perspective . . . And then that breeze returns (but where
***was it yesterday?).

*

David Dodd Lee published six previous full-length books of poems, including Orphan, Indiana (Akron, 2010), The Nervous Filaments (Four Way Books, 2010), Abrupt Rural (New Issues, 2004) and Arrow Pointing North (Four Way, 2002). Sky Booths in the Breath Somewhere, The Ashbery Erasure Poems (BlazeVox) appeared as well in 2010. His new book, a selected of work previously unpublished in book form, The Coldest Winter On Earth, Poems 1998-2011, is just out from Marick Press.