In the middle
of the week, a new
day in a new year without

a prompt

to steer my way through
strangely calm waters.
It’s so clear, I can see the bottom

where the crayfish crawl.
No ice or wake to block the view.
Outsized snowflakes float

in the air in no hurry to fall
to the lake’s surface,
or my outstretched hands.

Painted the color of the water,

this wooden boat
knows so much more
than it’s willing to tell.

I’m learning to work with it.
Unlicensed and unleashed
upon the morning.

You divide the circumference
by the diameter
of so many things:

A hubcap left on the side of the road.

The green inside
a traffic light that swings
in the wind ahead. The red
and yellow ones too.

Another utility hole cover.

The rooftop to a bluebird
nest box in the prairie.
The base of a street lamp
up the hill. The cut
log from a poplar tree.

And the circumference
of the reclaimed
permanently muted
bronze bell
in that “For Whom”
sculpture you pass
each time
in search of
a perfect circle.

is whatever you want it to be.
I wait for the day’s fog
to lift

to watch the sky shift
from brushed metal
to crystalline lake. I wait

for you to arrive
wearing that cappuccino
comfort sweater

and those moldy berry jeans.
I wait in the dooryard
for raucous rust

birds

to land on the wrought-iron
fence painted the same
shade of prairie winter

as the trim on the house
we once shared. I wait
for the singing to begin

when I open the exit sign
hued gate—the one
that matches the color

of a silence I find inside. I wash
my hands. I wait no more
for everything to bleed into itself.

If I could build another bridge made of one long line of poetry, it would be pedestrian too. It would begin not in the middle of a lost memory. No, it would pick up after “it got very cool.” It would move to a different rhythm—not vehicles rushing by beneath. Waves of a solitary sea before it meets its mouth opening wide instead. It would slow us down. Absolutely not a confluence. A mixing zone where the mixing is so much like a—there is no beach. No old. No new. There is this launch. A laugh in the steely air. And it is still so very cool.

Note: This poem is a response to John Ashbery’s untitled poem that runs the length of the Irene Hixon Whitney Pedestrian Bridge (designed by Siah Armajani) in both directions.

100 miles from the nearest lighthouse,
will I finally be

home?

Years spin and hiss by. I protect this
solitude with a veil of fog

that mutes the bluest
ocean. There’s really only one

in this world. A great myth
to divide up the salt.

To carve water into poor excuses
for killing off

the other. Let my fear
of never arriving dissipate

in the eye
of the next true storm.

To widow the kills
you swam in as a child

To kill it in that beautiful
little black dress

on New Year’s Eve
in New York City circa 1985

despite your exposed
widow’s peak

To kill the

widow

left on the blank page
of your heart

To be the black widow
spider they killed for no reason

after she was just following
her instincts

To kill the porch light
before you discover that hillside

covered in widow grass
To be so lost in it

Monarch butterflies dodge the ice.
Foggy morning.
Bluejays
float
by your bedside.
Giant
yawn.
Tsundoku haunts.
Raccoon
eyes.

She leaves the noise behind
without asking the ghost
to play another song
on his guitar. Lost

in a winter garden,
she greets madness
with a kiss on the cheek.
A jealous death

disappears. Inside
the utility shed, salt
separated from water
no longer ruins her.

Do I dare ask? Did I
fall asleep on the ferry again?

Am I back where I began
before the night started?

How do I respond
to the other side?

Does a face filled
with anticipation

of finally arriving
look the same as one

harboring

the pain of having to say
good-bye again? Were we

coming or going?
If I ask the quarter moon

that carves out its place
in the backdrop

to another evening,
will I get an answer

I can sip from forever?
Are those rocks

down there? Sunken
ships? A subway train car?

The wedding ring I forgot
to claim, or one made of brass?

If I jump
in, who will hold

my black parka? If I see
purples and greens flash beneath,

is it a reflection
of the sky’s eruption

into the Northern Lights,
or a memory

I cannot erase
with any amount of kneading?

Which island? Who owns

this lighthouse? That bucket
of red and black pebbles?

The pearls of a thousand
oysters buried deep within?

The land? Is this time spent

in the waiting room
more a wading through?

Who was it who said
answers are overrated?

Do you have her number?
What if I were to look

into your eyes and respond:
the color of water.

I dream of swimming
in the sea beside
a band of wild white

horses, and then

I swim my dream
after drowning
(just for a little while).

This life no longer
chronological, they run
through the marshes

of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer,
soon trampling over a blank page
to be filled by another too bright

day into starry night.
The Mediterranean rolls
its waves in a kaleidoscope

of greens & yellows,
blues & whites,
even purples, Van Gogh

would suggest. The horizon
set so high above, fishing boats
must distance themselves

to pierce the line
into the sky. 136 years
since Van Gogh came to paint

his dreams, I find

the sea rising and salt poisoning
the fields. Where will the horses
and fellow flamingos go

when the Rhône delta drowns?
Can we coax it into becoming
a blue carbon sink in time?