Poems by Steven Haruch.
I W I S H I K N E W W H A T T O T E L L Y O U
The rain broke its news to the aircraft And spent the afternoon holding to the story About to end above our row of houses, An ugliness painted into the corners. Water spilled through the window onto my shoulders, The lights dimming from the storm outside.
I saw you, or thought I did, standing outside Trembling like the wings of an aircraft With nowhere to land, your shoulders Pulled in. You shouted, "I've got a story To tell you soon," your hands at the corners Of your mouth. Between the houses
Your voice kept at it, or instead, the houses Kept at your voice, though it stayed outside Long enough for you to give up, and from the corner's Grayish angle you took off. The aircraft Carrier was in port, and you were to write the story Of how it nearly sank near one of Atlas's shoulders,
In that other hemisphere full of dark shoulders And smallish straw-covered houses. I didn't bother calling down from the second story Just to tell you I hadn't been outside In twenty-seven days. The aircraft That nearly drowned you out were at the corners
Of my eyes, and the carrier, returned from the corners Of the earth, needed you. The highway shoulders Were jammed with cars, the bright aircraft Dipping their wings. All across town, the houses Prepared for their sailors, welcomes home hung outside. But they don't remember how to live on land; the story
That would make you famous, you said, was not a story At all, but a collection: the folded corners Of a hundred sailors' diaries, written outside The official recordÑhow each shoulders A separate desire for the sea, for the houses Of childhood, for the deck and its eager aircraft.
But you are a different story, your thin shoulders, Your glasses chipped at the corners. Now the houses Are all dark. Outside: the rain, the distant roar of aircraft.
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