You'll See a Sailboat

See the punk-haired bush as a stout little argument between
trees and grasses. See the bonny woman in a skirt
the color of a hatchet wound blooming. See what differs
between what you're awaiting and what approaches,
breathing fire. Nothing is ever resolved, not to a sufficient
degree of accuracy. Not speed or location. Not
the numinous image of the dead soul ascending the stair.
Not beauty. See the bearded prairie, the plain, a plane
crumpling into the ganglia of hills at the feet of the mountains.
See 72 yellow balloons above the used car lot. See the soul
floating, strung taut to the body, but fumbling for shears.
On Tuesday, I awake announcing aloud, Today is a day
in which something will reveal itself to me. On Wednesday,
I buy a toothbrush. Thursday, my parrot hugs every fine turn
of phrase, and we two spend afternoon reiterating,
I hate you. I want a cracker. I hate you. I want a cracker,
until the parrot flies from me and returns to the dense forest of
my imagining. I'm alone. You're with me. I'm giving you
all this as a gift: conifers as metonymic California,
pasture as the overwhelming sense of Nebraska,
the way I remember Denver. I remember Denver. It was
her slight nose leaning in profile below the clear space
of her forehead. It was a wrinkle in America. But you were
awaiting a messenger carrying his satchel of tidings.
I see a circus tent. You think, why does he keep doing this?
Presenting images in this way, and abandoning them so readily
for others? In the flood, it's better to flow like water.
In the gunfight, it's best to avoid absorption. In the launch
window, I make like a rocket and chase my satellite head.
The trinkets on the mantel jingle their crystalline jingle.
See the photon trespassing the wide pupil. See the soul
reiterating to the wide expanse of the ether, I hate you,
I want a cracker. But this is frustrating, you think,
all these ideas and nothing developing clearly. Not her face,
not the stake in the tall grass securing the tent to its billowing
sense of interior. Relax. Allow your shoulders to sag low
from the blinking pod of your head. You'll see the hatchet
arcing through the murky air. You'll see the dragon
reciting his song of fire. You'll see a sailboat.

Copyright © 2008 Jaswinder Bolina All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission