Poems - 5. Alfredo

Because, Alfredo, the world has many things,
I tried to discern dreams from skin,
and other useless symmetries.

It was many years before
the ragged brown of the earth
let me lift my gaze above the emptied branches.
The rooftops and you are made from the same metal,
and the same gray sky,
softer than thistledown, as cold as mornings
after a window was left open
to predict your eyes.

When we meet, I will say:
"Do you not remember, Alfredo,
that time, long ago...?"
As if you understood waiting
in the diner's back corners for coffee, eggs,
or on Saturday mornings,
in bed, lying in your imagined scent;
waiting after a sticky climax for indifference,
and the sky to break open,
releasing its silent parachutes.

Strange, Alfredo: I am in the city,
yet you are in a place with a tree stump
chopping block, the axe
left on white frosted grass,
and no flashing sirens that howl when the wind howls.
Is it to me that you will come,
or will I step out one winter before dawn
and find a muddy path leading me to a mound
of split timber?