Dust the unplowed streets
for fingerprints. Winter begins
to look like winter. Criminal
squirrels and wild turkeys
scatter up the hill. Fingerpicking
hibernates inside gloved pauses.

If glass wall mullions
are people with limbs dangling
over the edge. If she dreams

about you (again), a figure
that saunters up an aisle,
the world suddenly muted.

If the drug has a half-life
of a month, and it’s day
one. If you know the lyrics

but forget

what they mean. If snow
is perception, not weather.
If the side

effects

of living
on the sidelines. If you do,
indeed, still have the potential

to love and know how
to map the Little Dipper
constellation in freckles

on her left arm.
If you do remember
where the exit is,

and existing

is wherever she
identifies the voice
whispering: “Nope,

still no driver’s license.”
If it’s no one’s fault
the owl left early.

When the elbow sinks
in + the muscle releases

its grip.

When the radiators begin
to hiss on an early January

morning in Minnesota.

When the unleashed
dog smiles back +

anger leaves your body
for even one breath. When you

touch the contours
of my face. When you tell me

I could become
a real girl.

When the wings we grew
together under the cold gleam

of a full winter
moon finally lift us up

and out.

the sculptures say a bird
the birds bleed a cloud
the clouds calculate a berm
the berms bleat a sax
the saxes suppose a window
the windows whisper a bucket
the buckets boast a verb
the verbs voice a shadow
the shadows shudder a hammock
the hammocks hum a gaze
the gazes grant an ear
the ears echo a lake
the lakes list a breeze
the breezes bet a pier
the piers posit a stump
the stumps suggest a silence

as I surround them with these
stones in motion again

If she could accept being this small,
hiking down a suburban sidewalk
alongside a six-lane

street. If she

could outrun the heavy
breathing, the footfall
on a semi-plowed

trail miles and days ago.
If she could decide
which way to go.

The bus lane: ruby or rose.
The enormous sculpture
of a rooster: cobalt or bruised.

The snow: bleached or ash.
Those tree trunks: silver or copper,
Shriveled drupes that refuse

to fall from a shrub
she cannot identify: umber
or rust. Dried blood on an animal

she cannot name:

maroon

or midnight. If she could

turn around

just once

to meet herself.

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.