Dean Young

Balloons in a Tree

You were expecting what, a nightingale?
Some sort of secret mechanism revealed?
You know what darkness is, right?
No one understands it.
Certainly not the steering committee
with its righteous hood armory.
Sometimes it seems to have feelers and claws,
sometimes it seems entirely internal.
My aunt used to stand at her high windows
and no one knew what she was thinking.
She claimed to have known Duke Ellington
and the doctors wondered how she too
was still walking. The best things
to believe in there’s no reason to.
Maybe a salamander told me.
A shower of gold.
What strange embalming spices to give a newborn.
What beautiful chthonic ticks.
Clapped-out erasures.
Faculties of dust.
What becomes of any of us?
Usually I have no idea
what everyone’s crying about
and just try not to stand out.
You hatch, you tumble, you try
to reach the sea through a downpour of gull beaks.
You have a tail, then you don’t.
Your dreams are all memories of flying.
Something vestigial throbbing.
What weird weather in the mirror.
What sweet music comes from the shatter.
Watermelon splatter.
What strange business to be in—
loving every fucked-up bit of it.

 
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