Читать книгу Red Rover Red Rover - Bob Hicok - Страница 9

For the sad Wallendas

If the sky set out to be beautiful

we’d turn away or throw our shoes at it

or call it pretentious as we went to sleep,

none of which has happened on my watch

except the second and those were flip-flops

and it wasn’t the sky I was trying to hit

but whatever makes a friend stick a needle in his arm

as if sewing the rip in his blood closed. When he died

the logical response was duh, the emotional response

was louder, more smashy/breaky

and I see this in people all the time

when I’m looking in the mirror, out the window,

at a park, a car, to the end of Canned Goods

where a woman cries in the direction of a can of peas

and I almost touch her shoulder as I pass, with my hand

and also a deer, the spirit of leaping, then I’m off

to peaches and barely hanging on

to the trapeze of the day, you say falling

I say when, you say net

I say the great ones

go without, as well as the plain ones, the stones,

the feathers, the torches, and everyone in between