Puddles form in the dips
along the road. I avoid them...
Beginnings are often more difficult than endings, but we find ourselves pulled through them on the promise of something more.
This poem is of an ending, but there’s a moment of intensity and then a return to normalcy. Are we ever fully changed? By people, by faith, by our own ambition? Or do we settle more firmly into ourselves through the years?
What do we do when the heat fades and we feel ourselves contracting back into our old ways of being? And what does it mean for something to last? Does it really take two people to hold on?
Puddles form in the dips
along the road. I avoid them
wishing I had another cigarette.
It would give me something to do
besides itch at the keyboard, waiting.
I think of the bottle-baby goat next door,
Nova, meaning:
a star increasing in brightness
before returning to its original state.
When we last spoke,
you wondered if I’d return:
I don’t know how.
Through thunder, the gravel holds
its ground.