Protocol prevents people, I hear,
from shaking hands with the Queen.
Some things are best left undone:
what I wanted to say, what I wished
you would do. Opportunity does not
knock, but wanders down asylum halls
wearing a bathrobe throughout the silent
afternoon. Here is yet another way,
another path through the woods,
to a grey house tangled in vines.
Such habits of my day build tight runs.
Safety deflects all happenstance
from stepping in a bit closer,
until skin is able to embrace skin.
I cannot tell you so many things:
but secrets, best left unthought, are
traps troubled by simple leaf fall.
Nearby a woodpecker taps out a
rhythm as if to call forth possibility
within an almost familiar frame;
and, fear smiles wryly at some joke
embedded among mundane shadows.
I speak, as in a dream, without sound.
Yet there is something behind these walls:
the wind, your voice, another room
without a door? Despite the day’s heat,
the stones feel cool beneath my hands;
and having no place among the staid
displays of circumspect civilization,
hammers are best left locked at home.
(March 2012)
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