My Self My Other
published in Diner
I want to say, “I’m straight, no really,”
but he’s so beautiful, tall and willowy,
blonde and with that disappearing face
the anima dons to elude man’s gaze.
We dance on a raised wooden platform
like a boxing ring unroped, perform
long waltzing turns, athletic, neat,
with the awkward grace of boys who meet
after a long harvest and first whiskey,
each the girl of the other’s dream.
Who leads? I think it must be he
who sweeps us off the platform’s rim
out onto air sheerer than first ice—
we push off, tentative, then glide free,
sepia shadows rippling over bottom grass,
gaiety upheld by its own fragility. . . .
Later, touring in a buggy with my wife,
I rein before a landscape still-life—
a tree, a barn, a throw of boulders,
washed hues in forms complete as integers—
when a voice from the woods like a wire
drawn through cheese finds my ear,
“My face, he’s cut my face to ribbons,
come see,” the voice mine as a woman’s.
All I’ve ever wanted was to sit
in the center of a wide quietness,
but whenever I draw near it,
I’m called from this world’s loveliness
back to the self’s intricate dramas.
My wife sits quietly. The woman of the wood
calls me to witness traumas
I’ve somehow caused. If I could,
I’d leave the one and save the other,
or abandon the other and be one.
Split, fixed, framed, I can do neither,
though the air’s ashimmer with danceable sun.
