it was then—
the moment accepting death he changed became
a WHITMANIC animal placid … self-contain’d then
interfered with—grafted to life again he is beset by
a nuanced rage
he’d never known is it because in oceans color-
less—so green so blue blue-green
rolled steel or wine-dark-drunken-purple under
fickle skies
where sea stars began dissolving or because coral reefs
had died or a car is parked too far
from the curb or occupies two spaces or because
some people
smoke or that he can’t gather magnolia blossoms
unfurling or CALIFORNIA towhees’ robin-hops or flights
of birds too high to hear or because antic dark-eyed
juncos peck
at side-view mirrors as aimless leaves
cross the verge it could have been the pajama clad apparition
so perfect as to be his MADAME TUSSAUDS wife,
who stood as if to speak
with arms outstretched in TECHNICOLOR darkness
& proffered—what could only be—a quart container
of goat yogurt battered empty because there is nothing
to do but
blink a pressure in his ears he’d never known
—a mockingbird fending off some crows or a peanut
brittle dryness that crackled singed the eye
—he doesn’t know—
veered down the sidewalk on a summer night
redolent of afterheat or because the sun does not rise
it does not set we rotate instead or that doors
still open
so we break into day & fall into night
as the moon moves around us—
careless
Jay Brecker walks and writes in southern California. His poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Rattle Poets Respond, Birdcoat Quarterly, The Shore, Permafrost, Lily Poetry Review, Ocean State Review, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere. His manuscript, blue collar eclogue was a finalist for Concrete Wolf’s 2023 Louis Award.