Visual art by María DeGuzmán
Somewhere in a winter
that’s barely a winter
my friends down south
are promising each other
nothing. What is warm,
what is heating my life here
is what’s long been kept
so close. The years
aren’t really measurable.
Or maybe there are only
miles. I’ve promised more
postcards, phone calls.
When a note comes from
Oklahoma to tell me
someone there is moving
houses, I stand in my
apartment waiting for
the moon. I play my
guitar to the streetlight.
Because that’s what
you do with distance.
Play and sing and sing
something the fast trains
can mimic, can carry
like so much dirty coal,
down and out of these
old and snowy mountains
to find my adjacent lives
pitched in another past, caught
like some Jurassic heart,
in amber, oak, or dirt.
Gulf Stream Magazine 