Member Poem

When we clash, running to human
points of fleeting touch to steel
as flesh kept under cabinet key,
we light up olden day skies, a thunder-crack
of lost teenage fumbling, with hints
of soft speech we gather from books,
continental conversations.

It isn’t so much to bend a knee
I came, but to draw pencil leads,
sketch some places that couldn’t have
been so gray if only we’d had
greater courage of shutting up when
slipping points called for it,
when we weren’t so proud of ourselves
for quoting columns out of context
and being too clever by half to fall.

But I still don’t wave trillium
bouquets aloft for a certain sight
of you coming back in daydream air,
only for crooked view of
such, more tampered with by salty
washing, nights of ice glass and
spirits sentimental.