Nils Nelson
UNFINISHED
I play the same album
you
weaned yourself on
when Anna left.
We worry too much ,
you
and I,
the little Thoreau
eating his dessert in quiet.
We keep adding ourselves up .
What we 've done almost never matters, our experience
stockpiled like Citizen Kane's collections .
Picture a janitor in his own basement,
his flashlight on the pipe with a weak seam.
Foreign cities on your postcards ,
narrow streets , the walls whitewashed with lime .
I follow the flowered carpet of a theater aisle
into daylight, a sidewalk table
where I practice with a stranger.
The record goes on complaining
in the last room of my railroad apartment.
At least I wake in a bed ,
palms up, pushing morning onto shelves
I can reach .
This ring
you
gave me , carved
from a bleached cow jaw.
I hold the eye of bone up
to
light ,
peenng
1n
like a jeweler checking for flaws .
Someone wrote that nature conspires against originality .
I take up where
you
left off.
Leaving teaches size.
When
you
come back I'll be here
bent over the balloon tire ,
filling, refilling- it's never right .
