This poem by John Gallaher hasn’t been published anywhere; John sent it to me in a batch a couple of years ago, so it feels doubly like a present. Sometimes, when I sit down to write a poem, I have the goal to produce language that talks to the reader the way I want to be talked too, soothingly, like a good parent to a child. I think this poem accomplishes that, in an especially giving way. (Coincidentally, I grew up in Albany, NY, so it does seem as if it’s talking directly to me.) I love how all the nouns seem to shimmer between real objects and unpindownable metaphors.
Neighborhood Institutions
It’s a project, isn’t it, this version of wandering the forest
with the purpose of getting lost and being found at nearly the same time, and in
proper order,
until a tree or something comes between them
and you’re no longer certain which is lost and which the peonies,
or if it matters, really, to the project.
Like Albany, for instance, or when you were first on your own
and every little hint of possibility was a blissfully painful scab
you couldn’t help but worry
in a careful, focused way, as if all offers were real offers
and no was every bit as thrilling as yes.
And what about the windows? What about each car
along the road? The yard is full of them, and we’re calling it heightened, and
Saturday,
out there on the porch waving and jumping up and down,
as we go on with our deliveries and postcards,
the artist and the model, equally seen, and the one of the bridge, or the one of the
pink kitchen, as if
there ever had been a conceivable past, or near future
here in the project, walking the forest,
past the windows, the stuttering line of cars.
Imagine you could have it and keep having it, and go on
like that until it’s all one thing swirled up into something you might call happiness,
or cake.
The gloss of it, the impossible forgiveness of it.
— John Gallaher