The Secret Outside
hawking straight from method
gives it purpose there would be
no obstacle to walking across the field
even the wild animals would invite
no game on this court no ball
but everyone’s winning
and everyone could touch again
and I could touch you for the first time
evoke the wonder but the wonder of what
childhood those feelings that won’t return
or maybe they do in some “exalted” form
but wonder should be something other
than staying in place or worse
rolling round in earth’s diurnal course
with rocks and stones and trees
a glimpse of something that ignites
when we light upon it
again but I didn’t say it
or what I couldn’t clear from the ground
read like gravestones
covered in vines that cut through the names
and made the history crumble
the history that spelled out
how it was supposed to be
but something that was never cut into stone
because it had never appeared
from a branch now in pink bud pops out
one day we could go back outside let’s say
out of the hole with the rabbit
the eagle overhead
out with the sun and the sky
without a “slumber” sealing anything
and play
there’s something inside us
that tickles when it tries to wiggle out
I mean in a metaphorical sense
or maybe I don’t
I have to trick myself into letting it
can’t force it or even touch it
and then look suddenly it’s out and shining
all around us
and could pluck you off the ground
right here because you
were Ganymede in the air
the light
streaming through your thin limbs and torso
First published in Interim: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics 40.5–41.5 (November 2025): 12–13.
