Ralph Angel
ANXIOUS LATITUDES
Up here, I am hyperactively farsighted.
My brain weighs three pounds and
when the show got on the road
my body was a mere appendage of it.
On a clear day, I'm busy directing landscapes,
not really shoving the shrubs around,
not ordering pastel houses from the hillsides,
but carrying them with me like a frayed
photograph in my wallet, so that I might read it
as a small corner of its vaster itinerary.
How the background shows through, blank smudges
and the so many time-connecting dots,
with all I have come to expect deferred
to
some
higher order, place or pocket-watch ticking together,
both of this world and on that side of the fence.
By now, judging from here,
the rewards must be enormous. Though
my body weighs as much as fifty brains,
always doing, always feeling, mostly feeling
(to get gushy), the traffic bangs and
snarls around me, and the collapsed pause
absents all passing scenery before it moves on,
now farther away. This happens every yesterday
and pained expressions linger on our faces.
