#11

Someone had posted a sign. "Missing," it read: "My cat." Throughout town, people opened windows, planted bulbs in flower beds. Children raced in swerving circles by the forest's edge. The sun. Less reticent. Bodies arched in fantasy upon couches at lunchtime, pants bunched around ankles. Trees budding patiently. Much talk of nothing over phone lines. Expanded proximity.

All the weeds discontent, from secret burrows lined with mud. The bicycles! Separating here from there. Dime store candy sweating in the sidewalk sun. All equivalence slowly finding names. Jeff and Ryan: video games for the hoop and ball. Karen, too old!, hid and sought beside the river. Friends. The office window of the hospital, a languid mirror of becoming.

Oh, is it spring? The crowding in of passive past in breezes? Sweating slightly in silent longing: limbs unfolded over others, the knotted sheets of light reflected. Genitals tired and wet from loving. The music of whole lives with nothing to be done, but smell of sex and honeysuckle. Teenage boys at dusk in parking lots. Mothers slipping into dresses. An organon of bodies rising as in novels, sinking as in death. Is it spring? Listen to music instead. The spell will part curtains upon the past.