Presented tonight at first as needle-
           holes in quilting, abetting my request
to be stitched more securely
           to the rich backing of good fortune
from which I’d fallen away, then
           transposed to vacant office windows
seen from the plane, lights that closer,
           warm to the palm, were kitchen
casements framing those I loved...

To be the object of so many needy
           imaginations! In plain sight most
evenings, but buried permanently
           in the mind, diamonds in mud,
available for metaphor any time
           and dug up at will like the moon’s
tabula rasa, blackboard to the
           starry-eyed: erased, drawn on
again, smeary with chalk, barely

itself before indentured to the broken-
           hearted. And who are any of us
to claim the role of broken-hearted,
           our shiny lives intact and cut to best
refract the living world? But in
           a rough bout the cartoon halo
of a circling, dizzy constellation
           suggests I lost the thread; I looked
up too late and love knocked me out.

JESSICA GREENBAUM lives in Brooklyn. Her poems, essays and criticism have been published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and Partisan Review.

© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.

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