Alone in a Boat with Two Oars

Once I finally arrived, I nodded

to the Doug Firs – hello, hello, hello –
descended to the dock, dropped a cooler
and a fishing pole next to the seat cushion
and shoved off. The high half moon meant it was late,
but I needed to be in the middle of something
without moving lips, without expensive shoes, without hands
always reaching to shaft, shake or take.

I rowed for a while and the yellow highway lines
disappeared beneath lily pads. All the cosmopolitan humans
starved for nakedness and assimilation swirled under
whirlpools oars made. Even your latest fuck you!
broke over the bow as a small-mouth bass jumped in the distance.

Have your city windowed in muslin draperies.
Have your big-dollar tabs and high-browed intimacies.

Here, singing bullfrogs
make more love and money between passing clouds
than your old-time decorative storefronts ever will.

So, I’m alone with two oars and a fishing pole –
some beer and night
not needing to be coaxed
from her clothes. Alone in a boat that floats over
what’s real and wet and alarmingly close
to what I’ve always wanted to get away from: you, so
small-town big dream, so awkward, unrefined,
disinterested and
apologetic. But now, under this sky, I think I really can
learn to love from where I’ve come. I think
I mean it

this time, stars. No shit.