America
       

The failure of history to open
into islands of blue-green, crimson-capped birds
      floating among the upper stories
of palms joins with the particular failure
of my life to clarify: as when haze

over the states below the plane
in which you have taken off for one of those islands
gives way to the lakes of New York, Wisconsin,
      or to gay Colorado's skin-tight peaks.
And I am driven into frantic weekly exercises
on the basketball court, or crashing bodies
at touch football, but there is no satisfaction.

      I'd rather travel.

I'd rather be frantic about something totally trivial,
      worlds spinning like the bubbles fish speak.

                    The pigskin beautifully arches.

Twenty years downfield
I'm lost in the movements my muscles
have feebly strained after since age five.

They seem happy, but I am lost.

Rather even the loneliness of the Minnesota winter
      where I might curl into myself
and learn the smooth convolutions of my shell.

Of course this is romantic. What do I want?
      No person can be a gastropod.
But there is a state in dreams
            I think I've been, like moments
of color on clear water, the mingling
of stars into shapes on far nights—

in that state I'm reborn with all the moves,
      my arms flash blue and green.

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Copyright © 2020 John Morgan All rights reserved
from The Moving Out: Collected Early Poems
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission