My Girl in California

Summary

In the train, the rain stops to take stock

of what I've kept: a shot of her, a dress,

a wink, a message under

a fake teak bar saying I'll see you in Vienna

when we're calm which we never are

and just now with the train track's clunk

dusty streetlamps start to pass

their string of streaked lights spread:

one light tries to grip a window – one laughs –

one smudges I love you, takes too long to leave.

Last one finds me, the only one who knows to stare

straight into night.

Otherwise it burns you up. I'm building a temple

to seven types of forgetting: it quotes greats,

lates, and quarterbacks. It whistles to

the night, filled with birds I've fed for years,

tuis, grackles, crows

who dive one-by-one into the Lethe

because they need no memory but their breed's.

We bob birdlike on that river,

but must not dive. We watch

the waves as they shrug from us, featherby-

feather, light-by-light.