Cool ones, too, I thought, though
I took the saleswoman's word
On that, the frames
Black and small—two orbits forming
An optimistic ellipse, crisping
Leaves from trees, buildings
Into bricks, as I neck
Around to fix the target, the margins
Vague as memory – is that
What I'd been living with? – like I've pressed
A stethoscope to dumb chests and sprung
From each an unexpected aria.

~

The pebbled street falls and swells, walls
Brush startled sleeves in hallways
I'd know better, darkened.

~

Friends were shocked, before, that I seemed
To choose fewer details to inhabit. One said, "Don't live
In an impressionist painting," and I wondered
Which one he meant, closed my eyes and tried
To catch the exquisite wink of wine glasses,
The belle-époque chatting itself to a long afternoon
Nap, tried to feel the rhythm of lattice shadows
Lacing the dance floor.

~

The back of a dry hand—a snow scratched
Pattern of hills, picked out from an airplane.

~

At the bathroom mirror, twenty years
Excavate my face, twenty years since I left
My last pair on a table at The Heartland Café,
Twenty years since I folded the temples gently
And walked out toward the life I expected.