I can’t promise the January pavement ice from the white sky.
I twist in my chair like a retread flung from a truck
speeding in the heart of its platinum sparks.
I dream of darting into the wake and snatching up seeds
to pollinate the far fields or fill the bellies of ducks
simmering above their fine-skinned legs.
I’ve thought of you since your retort
to my greeting shadowed me in my own vision
as a pastry shell, or a tea cup
printed with silhouettes of cats, paws lifted
in salute. A souvenir,
fresh as the deaths of the elderly when power lines
snap and the asparagus dries on its shallow roots.

I can’t pick out the melody in vines.
I am imitating you, who have ridden
far on square wheels,
showing the red lining of your jacket,
blinking like a wan petal in a compost bin in the cold, cold
future, and the dare dissolves into scissors lacing your boots.
You expect applause and you get it.
Some afternoons I perfect stillness and the books
chuckle from their bending shelves.
They have not, categorically, seen it all.

I can’t promise the darkening of floors dwindling down
or the peeling of wrinkled skin among sour potatoes.
I like to sit back and calculate failures two at a time,
but it’s polite to take the lead and perennially I do.
There’s no swallowing splinters and no perforating
lead boots and no long blond hair wafting cloudwards.
There’s no prophecy implied. I’m a rowboat
upturned in a graveyard.
I predict the collapse of the price of copper.
I predict the sky draping itself on your shoulders,
the ermine you’ve coveted, righteous
as dawn drowning. I crown you
statute of milk spilled,
the coast and skyline I secretly flee.