You know those moments
when you’re young, dumb-
struck by the sight of something,
the air undone by mist and naked
sunlight as you pace the tracks
in Seattle for no reason,
save the oily light,
the peel of moon, coy
between the clouds.
Sure, you feel the same
old disaster, the same sadness
about sadness.
That’s a given, but then,
you’re hit by a fit
of chromatic blue. Hunger-
blue, blind-blue, squeezing
the high fence
like a host of baby-faced
pythons, so cerulean, so rare,
in the dripping freeze,
so necessary and painful
after months of gray
restraint, gray as the gray hair
around your mother’s near-dead face,
your hand released, finally, from her
pressed fingers, her furious fist.
It’s the first time you notice—
like the open throat of desire,
the tapped vein—
how much you want the world.