Beau Blue

Swans are mean…
meaner than geese
and mallards and mangy dogs,
cats or little girls chasing
butterflies with a net…
Just plain mean
and stubborn and sometimes
dumber than posts
and when they’re noisy
run away quickly ’cause
they bite and spit when they’re yelling…
Like men…

(The woman behind him is Emily Swann)

he always had his thumb
and index finger in his watch
pocket trying to hold time
still

it was his ‘prize’ possession
and he held it lovingly
stroked it constantly
chanting to ease its burden

of knowing the exact size
of tomorrow

mya and me,
we sold love cards
at the flea market,
hand drawn tennessee dawns
and a poem, hand lettered
under the fold, sacred
words everyone recognized,
five dollars with a pastel
envelope, her best grin.
guys who knew their wives
soft spots bought two or three,
the radio played all summer
/’love the one you’re with’/
as she drew mornings swiftly
through nights as wide as sin.

She wanted a little room for thinking,
another for sleeping with strangers
she’d meet in out-of-the-way bars.

A space for counting the slights
she endured during her time at work
delivering proposals to bored boardroom

colleagues waiting to escape to ski slopes.
She needed a room for stitching desire
into slinky black dresses, another

for dinner meals taken alone in dim light.
A cage for her anger, a den for self-pity,
and a large cavern to hold the echoes of her dreams.

Third day.
They’d made it
to a trestle bridge in Tennessee.
Watched a sunrise light the mountain fog
and had the musk of morning raise
a chill along their arms.

At a diner,
waiting for more summer,
a shift change waitress war
reminded them of stinging nettles
they’d stumbled into
eighteen hours east.

A day they prayed wouldn’t be an omen
as they moved out into another dawn.