Toes up—will I be ready to ascend?
The world of dirt and roots is at my back,
and though I feel my shoulders twist and bend
as if I have to carry it, in fact
I know I’ll reach a day to step away.
Face up, a shrug will loosen all these straps,
reversing all their gravity. I’ll pray
for levity, to dump all my perhaps.

When I rehearse this passage late at night,
face down beneath the blanket of my fate,
I wrestle with the darkness in the dive.
But mercy rolls me over, up towards light,
laid out like this and rinsed of all that weight,
when I’ll be hearsed, so ready to go live.

With no new information, only time,
I shuffle memories with a few old photographs.
The camera that we rarely took along—
or someone’s—caught us, here and there.

These phrases, stitched together, must convey
a finished thing, with some intensity
and maybe some surprise. You take the way
a necktie—one with silky dignity,
accustomed to the better restaurants—