There is the vascular restriction of life

as it stands

            the heartache of waving goodbye to yourself

            putting yourself on the bus

            the tail lights red and sad

                        as you pull away.

And letting go in this moment

            walking home from the bus stop

   into your home, where everything is

   strange again, as you feared it would be

the last time you did this.

There was one life in Baltimore,

            red brick houses, driving

            your daughters to ice skating

            there was money gone to seed

And another in Spain,

            a short bus ride from Huelva,

   near the ocean and the Portuguese border,

            where you lay in the sun to read

            where you wandered a country lane in the dark

and were startled by the visage of a

            white horse, smelling the air,

crouching silently, breathless,

            that it would never leave.

And this one—what is it?

What is this picture of you?

            alone, padding through the snowfall,

            near the hospital, breathing fog

into the air.

This place, a living palace of comforts and solitudes,

Which yet describes for me an arc,

somewhere beginning, nowhere ending,

which I suppose is my story to follow.

As yours is of the fine lines, antique modes, steam,

The geological disaster. And his is

Of the curved city, the expression of pleasant surprise,

The wheel, locomotion.

These stories, hard as stones to compare,

Our vagrant paths northward, and the threat

Or gain of that fiendish move south.

To know names, I am taught. To be caught

In wheat fields, touching each stalk, calling it by name.

To stand on a city corner, to wait

In a city of peeling paint,

a surface

That refuses

To connect.

——————–

Okay, for me this one needs some very particular help. I know the enjambment is key here–where the lines end, how long they are, how consistent they are in length, how varied they are in purpose–but I have too many totally different ideas to post them all. I’m looking for suggestions, radical or otherwise.

Finally, some good news:

A compact T. Rex with good language skills, fine vision, and the ability to fly.