Guttering

One more poem in the last breath of the year then.
A tiny ark for all that was as the rain begins.
Here are all the nights, spent matchstick days
huddled together:

this poem is the silky ribbon to bind them.

The chopsticks I carved,
the books I bought to read in an appropriate chair
the new scar on my left palm
the letters from the boys locked up -
they are in here.

All the steps I've paced in the basement,
and every mile of sidewalk I covered these
twelve months
are in here.

My kittens, Della and Winter, are back from
their new families to rub up against this poem's legs,
and here's their own windowsill of a stanza
to nap on for as long as they want -
welcome home girls.

All my own hours waiting, nose at the window,
those great mouthfuls of silence
are in here.

The family that rented me the room,
they're all here playing cards and still
wondering about me down in the basement,
the man living under their stairs.

My new tattoo, the two words scrawled over
my heart, they're in here.
The bleeding has stopped and all
the letters have some new skin.

Every ounce of every laugh I made or heard
this year - you can't have a poem like this without
all the laughter you can find -
all of it is in here.

A pant cuff of beach sand,
a wineglass of rainwater from the woods,
one silver firework, two purple ones,
and every hot, midnight prayer -
yes, all of that is in here too.

The stone I scoured the city for,
the perfect one the nice short jeweler brought
out of the safe, shipped from overseas,
that brilliant rock that took the long boat ride
back to Egypt - I hated to see it go,
so I'm putting it in here too.

And as for all the moves
I should have made,
things I might have said
that would have made a difference
to a stranger or the people I know -
I've already piled and torched them,
them and their shadows.
They are the smoke you smell.
It's the only thing to do
with what we didn't.

The kisses - the good ones and
the tipsy ones the sad ones and
all the harmless little ones that led to
more good ones -
I'm leaving those out.

They are free to drift on their warmly pressed
wings, flitting around this jar full of things forever,
just to brighten the place up.

Which brings me at last to you.

You, who aren't in here either.
You who won't be bound anywhere,
especially in any poem I can order.
You who have slipped off somewhere,
gone again, breaking into next year
early perhaps, or stealing into some salty,
sweetache dream I will sit up in bed from
sometime late in the second week of June.