The last time I looked out the window
at the Mississippi River down the road from here,
and like I could see it rippling,
I was softly toeing around the bedroom like I had a secret.
It’s not such a cautious love affair anymore.
Dogs watch their owners drown in its thick mud.
It seems what impresses me from here is my distance.
The Beatles are on, and whatever roils in his or her liquid forms
doesn’t apply to me.
Even when I’m soft like this,
playing harmonica in a corner beside a wall where the air
blasts at me to say, Damon, just go outside anyway.
I want to.
I want to dream I can live a long life on this old Smith-Corona,
daring myself to find food in the stories that come and go
like barges I watched just off the French Quarter with my partner’s mother,
feeling years ago now. I didn’t like the bum playing harp behind us.
But she did.
She kept throwing up a thumb,
and not as if to say anything. It was saying something very specific:
Don’t you dare stop. I want the moon to shine a light on me
and this and my son who’s fallen in love.

Damon Marbut