The Relentless Pronoun
If in summer’s dalliance of screen doors
there’s a warp on the last board
so nothing closes right
you are evasive aslant
Why do I take up the you burden
carry it all day, suppose
these quibbles will dissolve
in evening’s chilled soup?
How is it that across tables, yards, long roads
next towns, cities, the sea
the mass and graining of everything
winds back to you?
Turn over any stone —
after the leaf and downpour
after the feather net of tent moths
the maples in final fade
It’s you again in the settle, in the cry.
First published in Cumberland Review