Parable of the Sun
The summer will last seven months. The dawn, the sky’s pantoum.
Making out in the park, you will realize you promised to love her
but did not. When it gets so hot that the tires melt into the blacktop
you will take this to mean, There is no way out, I cannot leave,
because you have yet to learn about the pathetic fallacy.
You are fifteen, picking grapefruit flesh out of your teeth.
You are seventeen, falling asleep behind the wheel, because it is
so warm, the inviting night. You want so desperately to be held,
the lines of satellites look like traces of angels’ hands in the sky.
Because, in truth, you were right, and you cannot leave,
you awake to pulp-lines of light streaming through the window.
You don’t remember how you got home. You’re just there,
the quail singing their morning dreamsong. So you dry your hair
in the desert heat. So you write a poem to make distraction
of the day. You think, if you could just look deeper
into the mirage, you could see God beneath a citrus tree,
rats clinging to the heavy–No. You could see a set of keys.
A faster car. Somewhere, beyond memory, to go.