Desire

by Christopher Buckley

Hands in my pockets, I came up with nothing

but keepsakes of dust, a dulled archipelago of air

stretching past my arms . . . night winds galloping

toward the islands at the end of the sea.

                                                                           All that spun

and landed here, turned out to be those like myself,

walking around each morning with our ticket stubs

of intuition, our recent best guesses . . . looking up

through a vacancy of trees to a couple rags of cloud

caught there, dingy blossoms floating branch to

branch.

              Neruda said the stones fell from the sky,

and science backs him up—all our beginnings

blasting out and dropping here or there beneath

the dark. . . .

                      Nothing—not the perfect restatement

of waves nor the borderless dominion of birds, not

the Southern Cross shimmering like a signet of hope—

has saved the least of us in our sleep.

                                                                      Shuffling down

the path in the park, I go on whistling what was once

considered a lively tune, thankful to even be a satchel

of ligaments and bone still able to transact enough chemicals,

one neuron to another,

                                         that I can appreciate the day lilies,

star jasmine, and have some idea about what’s missing

when a streak of grey engraves hosannas of moonlight,

the spindrift off the rocks, anything that sounds

remotely like a prayer

                                          sent into the air to a god who,

in his infinite memory, must know he abandoned us

here—so many self-conscious molecular assemblies—

specs in a starry whirlwind of desire.