Joshua Keiter

They have been saying 
We are so close now 
If we can just get through 
The next two weeks 
Or two shots 
Or two months 
It will all be over 
But they did not count on 
So many of us forgetting 
What it means to be close 
To something or someone 
Having kept imposed distance 
For so long even though 
It seems reasonable 
At this point to be nostalgic 
For those lonesome days 
In the early spring
When the earth could 
Hear itself breathing again 
Because we were not crowding 
The skies or the roads 
With the particulates 
In their pervasive proximity 
That will eventually after all 
Herald our own destruction 
When this is all over 
So close and too soon

Reading about symptoms 
The loss of smell 
Has always correlated
To the function of memory 

No one can remember 
What it was like before 
Now we only see the smoke 
While few detect the fire 

In our sleepless rage
We are burning away 
What was burned in 
At such an early age 

Namely how to tell when  
The fire keeping you alive 
Might burn the place down 
While your senses are sleeping 

Rocks dashed against the clouds

Before you start 
Thinking 

A new beginning means 
A new start 

Consider how one of 
The first stories 

You heard this year 
Involves 

Deliberately wasting 
A quantity of 

What some of us spent 
Most of the last 

Year building while 
Others try 

To deny for political gain 
The victory

Most of us waited 
Four long years 

To vote for knowing 
The hangover 

Would cast a shadow 
Over the light 

Making all things new 
Start over 

Even a day 
Full of reruns 
You missed 
First time around 

Feels as new 
As every childhood 
Memory there is 
No time to remember 

You keep trying 
To recapture 
Inadvertently 
Creating different

Moments as familiar 
As a day passing by

A circle has no beginning 
And no end 

Unless an interruption 
Is demarcated 

For the sake of chronology 
And disorder 

Keep interrogating the systems 
Not the years 

The days are not sentient 
We who count are 

Find the gaps to let out the circles 
That need breaking

The pile of belongings 
At the old house where I used to live
Seem only to have grown in size 
Since last I made their acquaintance 

Perhaps out of sheer boredom 
Or the inevitable fact of disuse 
Having sat here for so long 
Collecting dust among other cells 

It is not enough to say 
I am not the person I was 
When first I obtained these objects 
Even the person I was 

Is no longer the person I used to be 
Having obviously moved on by now 
Since even they no longer skim 
Through at least some of these pages 

Why then is it so difficult 
To resist the adolescent urge 
To gather them all up in my arms 
Or neatly stacked in portable boxes 

And bring them with me wherever I go 
Since that is already where they are 
Better to leave them here to continue 
Their independent development 

Without me hanging around

The stories we have told 
About the stories we tell 
Are wholly inadequate 
To the life as lived 

Or the stories suppressed 
By the supremacy of 
Unearned inherent worth 
From positions of privilege 

As the facade crumbles 
Into ordinary words 
Unlikely to be repeated 
Until placed in proper context 

May the landscape renew 
Through uninhibited cultivation 
Of gardens never conceived 
In any familiar minds 

But grown to fruition nonetheless

After “Soul”

The spark 
that causes 
you to fall 
to earth 

is what makes 
the meaning of 
a leaf falling 
to the ground 

A leaf falling to the ground

We could not see 
The planets kissing 
On the solstice 
Because of clouds 
That this evening 
We noticed in the distance
On our routine walk 
Were inventing colors 
That might disappear 
Once we turn the corner

On the second day 
Somehow it did not 
Feel quite the same 

Until the music played