“It’s Always Something,” Sally Delehant

Yesterday the wind took our picture
off the wall over the piano;               birds chirped
their curt symphonies in the box elder.             I thought
of you—         your obvious loveliness,                 your obliviousness
to lost things.        An ambulance blinks two lanes over,
a restaurant goes under,       your little niece kicks off her shoe.

We pantomime infatuations,             put on scarves.
you’ll never again speak to your father.            What was
once my knee in a theater                 is tired eyes at a kitchen sink;
we fall into us.                       A squirrel upsets the feeder, hangs by one leg
and reaches.                   (Even my feet are angry.)               You tromp in
muddy leaves,                test the alarm,              whisper lub-dub.

Silvered streets gird our apartment.                   I fasten
my parka            to leave.                                   Everywhere muck, newspapers,
a blanket—        our neighbor in flip-flops has forgotten her key.
     I daydream the ocean, your hand on my ankle.
I’ll walk without stopping, won’t care if I ever do.               The wind can whip
its wants, can rattle each thing,                          rip roofs from shingles

at angles.           I’ll think of you—            forgetting
which switch is a light                    and which the disposal,

climbing on my back at a carnival,           quieting

after pendulum hung work days.           The streetlights

have been on for an hour.           Nothing will let me come to you.



From A Real Time of It (Cultural Society, 2012).