A Poem by Michael Loughran

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

One Two Three

The future is treebound in its iron feathers,
lazy, possibly indigenous, mute as a roach
and as scampery, so I pick up your sunglasses
and put them down, I’m enthusiastic about sunglasses
and saying your name in full — 
the high river in me
would take a chainsaw to every tree
and that’s the part that belongs to you.
History doesn’t care about itself.
“Yes,” it says, “this is what I’ve done
and I don’t know why and won’t stop.”
I play it songs and approach it sideways
and of me it makes a glove.
Desire rides quiet through the fist
of the dark heat, July and future Julys,
last July, a set of Julys only a fool would name,
a feeling like excitement passing through
me without permission, the early beardedness
of the irregular treeline in a yard not mine
and not yours. To borrow a yard
and face it squarely and address you
and its things is, roughly, peace. Is what I have.
Fortunately unfortunately my head is all heat.
I’ve taken a pill and it is called
When the Hawk Landed on the Roof
with Its Suitcase of Rubies
and Spit the Rubies Down the Chimney
and I Gathered Them into This Pouch.
It took the whole elbow of an afternoon
but I know now that many untrue things
are also extraordinary. Thusly I bide my time,
an idiot on idiot earth among trees,
a machine of notions unfurling all night
and all morning, too. There’s a turtle
to which I owe an apology and I must now
rush down the black path towards it.
But even the famous argument about enthusiasms
is in the end only a cool drink
meant to occupy the hands of others.
For you it will always be a red sixteenth note hammering.
So you must retire from previousness.
You must sweep the patio
because it may please the birds
roosting anxiously in the low chamomile.
When the birds are just bugs and when the bugs
are petals and the petals ash,
sweep nevertheless, or read the old notes
out loud to a chair.
The blue chair of necessity will do.
If it doesn’t, don’t attempt to pet the sky,
just gather something up and present it.
It will be like tilting your flashlight by accident
onto whoever you miss and did not know
had arrived at the picnic.
By then I’ll know every word is also a germ.
By then I’ll have never said anything inane about nature,
or have noticed all this metaphor-resistant
three-foot grass, or this surprising
pathway, itself surprised, out to the pier’s remainder.
No planner will have embarrassed it with a boardwalk
of reclaimed wood, dedicated benches, and red gravel,
where once I saw a man shitting
among unsocialized geese.
Perhaps the trees are oaks
and sycamores, perhaps the index
of broadleaf weeds is Lambsquarter
and Mallow and Shepard’s Purse and Spurge
and Yellow Rocket. Perhaps what blooms
is Indian Paintbrush or Morning Glory.
What a pleasure it is to step on a flower.
I want the old July, but old July was awful,
green bugs and strangers. I want the new July,
the sidewalk of it, the noise of dispute or affection
on loan. I hate an unclear thought.
I hope one puts me to sleep
and I wake up dumb on the old lawn again.

Michael Loughran’s poems have appeared in Tin House, Harvard Review, Indiana Review and elsewhere. His first book has recently been shortlisted for the Cleveland State Poetry Prize and the Akron Poetry Prize. He lives in Philadelphia and is poetry consultant for Subtropics.

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at [email protected].