Poem With a Deadline, or, There Are Some Crocuses at the Edge of the Driveway by Ryler Dustin
"I like the way the silence makes me think of you, how much life we have to fill it with."
Poem With a Deadline, or, There Are Some Crocuses at the Edge of the Driveway
by Ryler Dustin
Today I wanted to write you a birthday poem
though now it is nearly four PM
and you’ll be home soon, carrying February air
in your hair, your cheeks
flushed in the way you hate
but I love as you hurry to the bathroom
and pee with the door open
telling me everything about the crocuses
that appeared outside or a meeting derailed
by a professor who won’t retire
but feels a touching concern
over local songbirds, while our cat turns
soft eddies against your flexed calves.
And though Duke Ellington said I don’t need time,
I need a deadline, when you come home
in ten or twenty minutes, my poem unfinished
and the table we paid too much for
littered with false starts, you’ll see me
for what I am: a man surrounded
by failed attempts, torn pages like fallen leaves,
having spent too much of my careening life
thinking I could feel like someone else
if I kept starting over, or that I’d be ready
for death when it came, until you and I
went to get flowers for Jessica’s party
and agreed on the waxflowers
because we liked how feral they looked,
how out of place in their plastic sleeves
and wanted something better for them.
Now even these gray afternoons
when I’ve finished work, cleaned the house
and wait for you to come
back to me, splitting my life open,
airing it out, I want even these moments
to last longer. I like the way the silence
makes me think of you, how much life we have
to fill it with. Though I used to, I no longer wish
for anything to end.
Wonderful images, thank you!
Endearing. Never too much of it.