There, in a brown chair, you float
on time’s rough nap and watch
the girl you had vaguely loved at twenty |
unhitched to time, swirl in a soft vapor
in a dress of love and death, of seaweed
green and narcissus blooms. You learn
how time sparks and flits like fireflies caught
in a mason jar.

I mean, in that chair, you try to sly step
middle age and your best friend’s cancer
and love again his younger sister, the girl
you once kissed in a stairwell of the college library,
and later in the heavy dewed grass of a Tibetan
prayer field, suddenly struck by the luck
of being young and making love among the flags
waving their allegiance to everything
divine.

You watch the woman learn to monitor
fevers and signs of skin breakdown, and how |
to expertly prepare syringe and vial, flick
the air from the plastic tubing –
like memory it bubbles to the surface.

Your best friend groans, grips the metal sides
of the hospital bed newly set in his parents’
living room. She looks at you. Sees the boy.
Delivers a steady pinch.

The plunge makes a giddy sound –
That drive to feel what’s needed, if not real.