Sunlight
BY RANDALL MANN
The sky between leaves is the brightest thing in nature,
Virginia Woolfe told the inquiring Rupert Brooke. Whatever.
–Michael Hofmann
It was June.
They threw a parade.
They called it Freedom.
Then what happened…
I floated like sentience
on a chlorine floor.
I wanted La Piscine
but settled for
an action scene.
Proximity meant
no one dies who does.
We played Kill
the Landlord;
we said we read
that not-that-
Francis-Bacon bio.
The game is fake,
like reading.
I get it:
relatability.
The wind
in a tree,
the oooh
of the super moon
sound like someone
dubbed, indifferently.
Not really. Maybe
like the sound
of the word
summer. Breezy
enough, someone
lied. But as it all
gets qualified—
summer stroll;
summer read—
there’s less
sunlight than (it’s okay)
want. Like a line.
I composed myself,
and there I was.
I took a lover
named whatshisname,
I believed in life
after, etc.—see,
I’m gullible. A little
more. No one
should say lover
any more than one
should summer.
Whatever,
poetry. I can’t
pretend you won’t:
Remember
the intensities
of poppies
leaving Milan,
a sign of
a wound or two
to come?
I’m trying not to
leave it there.