You have taken me up and rinsed me out, daughter, wrung me
in your hands like an old shirt, frayed and sweat-stained.
You have peered at all you’ve collected over the years
in the basin of your poetry and have sighed and
rinsed and wrung again, looking, if not for
clarity, then for a settling of residue
into some pattern that can, like
tealeaves or entrails,
be read into.
I would hang like a twisted scrap, dried up, stiff on the line,
if the wet rag you’ve been working at were not just
a fabric of memories and nothing to do with me.
I am outside of your grasp. You imagine me,
for instance, stretched in the sun, clean,
benignly watching, flying in light,
cleansed, arms stretched out
to embrace you, to put
you at ease
with all the frictions of our past. How can I possibly tell you
I am really off by myself? I am not the shirt in the sun, am
not the wind whipping the shirt to softness, nor the sun
bleaching the shirt to white, nor the blue sky nor
the grass where the shadow of the shirt
dances to and fro. How can I tell
you, daughter, I am not even
talking to you
at all?