1 New Poem

Boarding Luggage

I number the points of electric
candle glow on wooden back walls,
the endangered rising of old-style
English police sirens and the
gargle-rabble sort of shouting,
indistinct low-end hum you
take wool shears to,

and be the lamb’s crossing.

In chance defeated, word by perilous
word as boxer’s blow, red-gloved
but never quite the knockout, just
dancing with time unspooled to
eternity.

I count spackle-gray
paint chip clouds on letterless
Sunday alongside pounding
headboard strikes of walked-o
dirty soles, of coming upon
less-traveled roadway map
and tangling them to nowhere’s
lead.

To say you’d love me like
Americans on vacation
wouldn’t be the half-knot
of Boy Scout code spark,
cracking it for sunways,

but all deserved.