Attachment and Ambivalence

Wander with me, between water and water,
as a program we use to gently suggest a set
of ramifications, two isolated owls, for the actions
that led to this, to you sitting beside me,
and you will cease to wince at every mention of the name.

The leaf, cutting the sky from the sky, at least for a moment,
implies ambivalence drowned in light. A particle
of an unknown element, which travels a breath between us,
and strikes fear into a mother’s heart; it is not just
some fairy dust, not just the silent operations of aliens.

I never made light of difference, I reduced it to lawns
moving slowly, the syrup the animals wade through,
the dialogue of two agents in disagreement. Forecasting
by waving my wand over a pile of my bones, I say a picture
is like a portrait, and that in some way I will get my mulligan.

As a little courtesy, don’t say you need me, pare the rind
off of that starfruit, find an upside in calculus. Get cold
in the space between your freckles; look out the window.
If I am right to guess, you already know what I am going to say next,
and you know it is the perfect compliment.