"The Distance Between Desires"

I'm wise to the distance--
to any distance. Roving is my right,
and the holiness of my heart.
I take up the pen to murder
certain Muses, to free the thoughts
that have resisted expression,
to purge the pain from the mind
and the confusion in the soul.

This is what I do--change the seasons
mid-month, midday, mid-life.
Doesn't matter what's wanted;
it's what's needed that we must
concern ourselves with.
Yet even as I murder one Muse,
another rises to replace him.
Thwarted, to learn discipline.
Remote, and removed, to
be taught and to teach,
to be healed and to heal.

This will prove to be the
strange summer of my
not-quite-discontentment.
I will let it happen,
roll the windows down,
let the wind have its way
with hair and hand.
I will remember better summers
than this, when I roamed the
wide world, almost alone.

Wishing for rain won't make it
come, won't make it leave its
lightning-lash and thunderclad
loveliness on the steps,
on the windows, on the trees
and sidewalks, roads and
remote balconies, where
we find it with black rubber
and red rubber boots,
bought for that purpose alone.

Somehow and soon I will make clear
the desires of my heart; I will
learn to love more my loneliness
than the haphazard debts I incur
for random and irrational reasons.
We'll come in, cold and careful,
guarding the bleeding and blessed
instrument that is the heart,
that is the thinking soul and
the spirit to be freed from
flesh into water and fire.

---
06.09.05
MWL