Catskills

Friday, July 15, 2022

I see a shooting star
and don’t
make a wish.

Is this fucking Buddhism,
I ask Dan
who is passed out

in the grass to my right.
He has an app
that shows a giraffe

in the sky.
A gladiator. Mars.
Yesterday,

I stalked
rabbit tracks
in the snow

until I felt the animal
didn’t want
to be found.

I don’t want
anything
except Zoloft

but stop short
of ingesting.
I am so controlled

this year.
I fuck no one.
I don’t drink

myself
into any emergency.
I pass on acid.

I do a little blow.
Tonight,
I bow to a choir

of trees, a majestic
grove of evergreens
who feed

nightly
on stars.
I like you, I say

to a Douglass fir,
which is a joke
because I like

no one
and can’t remember
that feeling,

the one like
awaiting
your lover’s figure

in a polaroid
to emerge.
I am an 80’s myth.

and go
to basketball games
on Christmas,

eat Chinese
and worry
over all the Catherine’s

I know.
I thought
the rabbit print

was a bear at first
because
I’m a city kid

and an idiot.
There was panic
and then

disappointment
that
it belonged

to a body so slight
when
I just want

to be dwarfed
by everything
these days.

Friday, July 15, 2022