Without

by Kevin Connolly

Maybe there is a plan, slow-gathering, still fluid​ — ​
sky a sea on fire, but relax. It’s nothing biblical.
It’s happened recently, unnoticed, twin rainbows after
a weird rain, the Lowes parking lot turned chiaroscuro.
Kierkegaard is hilarious. The long game, the trauma,

grandiloquent doubt. How differently slower stories play out:
letters wandering like taxis, dandelions, ants wet with wings.
You arrive, dressed in greens and browns. Make your point
as if it seems worth making; loiter by the pool.
The little wet lights sudden as coins, etcetera.

Like someone turned off a projector, the sand goes dark.
Evening’s green an ideal of fatigue, crescendo; tidesound
rampant, now snared in grass, now rushing the bed.
What you like is in the limo. But a beach is just a day.
You can memorize, but it’s only known once.

Haven’t you heard? It’s a battle of words:
but should we go with favourite or only?
With. Without? It can’t be helped, but
there’s a lot of this about. Tonight we dined
by the pool. It likely saved our minds.

I hope you had there the same light, too.
The Martians. Sun through black locusts.
Those hovering figures from our pasts.