John Clare
Now I remember
I wanted to talk to you
between your Selected Poems
and the punk rock music
playing on the radio
Between the blue irises and the Mexican lawn service
The skaters and the dragonflies
Do you know what it’s like here
Scared beneath trees
the spotlight on the one rose
is the one spotlight
The sun keeps going
Tell me something between the yellowhammers and the leaf blowers
Between a worm getting pulled out of the dirt into the sky and a worm proging the dark
*
Children play in the past
in pastures and now I remember
7-Eleven parking lots
skateboarding through
black fields
Cows move through the fields to the fence and won’t move again
Cows move
through the parking lot
toward a bike rack
in the heather
Black tongues
park out front and idle their engines
Daisies chain and unchain
In the morning someone hoses down the hot concrete and insects crawl through your name
*
The dogs are shy and snap
chew through chain-link
each other and now I remember fur
and won’t let go or be beaten
to death by kids
Let the fur fly!
The boys ollie over the dogs
in their dreams
In dreams
some of the boys
kiss them on the mouth
Their mouths are clean and their noses are pink
All the dogs I grew up with are gone
They were someone’s sweethearts shitting on the sidewalk in the sun
*
Flowers call you
on the telephone and the rain
passes you notes
none of us will ever read
now I remember every line
a pine needle
falling at your feet
Peonies drip onto the ground
making long distance calls
person to person
The car alarms sound like roses
There are roses peonies and giant white papery things the size of your face and ferns
Ferns ferns ferns
The loves of my life
*
Birds are never lonely next to you
in neighborhoods and wings clear the air
and are gone
into holes or headaches
and leaves
Now I remember
There are holes all around
Holes in children
Holes in trees
Holes in the water and in the teeth of small animals if you can see that and can you see that
And wasps
eating entire families of deer
Here
I wanted to show you
