Supplement

It's not enough to look this way.
I want to feel young.
I want to have strength and energy,
Focus and healthy joints.
I want to be able to stand up
As quickly as I can fall.
I have accepted that I will never die,
So if I'm to continue in time,
I want to choose the direction.
There are things to be done over
And better things to be noticed,
If I could just have the strength that's due me,
With the inkling that dreams are a reason to try,
That ambitions are something you pursue.
I got it all wrong;
Never had any use for the median.
I was happy to grow old if I didn't have to trade,
If I could still be a child on a bike,
Or doing somersaults in the sun.
So what do I take now?
Do I boil the water and dip the leaves?
There must be something nature readied
For just this regret.

Salvage

I was going to buy an old crate for $50.
It said DYNAMITE on the side
And I was going to place it in my bathroom
To hold magazines.
But a minute later I forgot why it was a good idea.
The chairs were better to look at.
They winced and complained when sat on,
As if it were your idea.
But everything was beautiful because it was old,
Because the paint had long since abandoned it's claim
And the handles had yielded their shape
To the intruding fingers;
The table tops polished and scarred and polished
By the same wandering hands,
By dishes, books, pocket change.
A great mottled cabinet stood sturdy and proud,
But whined and grunted as I opened it,
As if I had woken it from much-needed sleep
And called on it to perform.
I know, cabinet, I thought.
We're not so different.
I'm not as strong as a I look either.
You'll stand unmolested in my kitchen.
We'll get along; we'll lie for each other.
I looked at the price and walked away,
Forgetting it needed me.
I can't afford that much history.
It's all better anyway, because it's old,
All differently, separately old.
I wanted to remain,
To volunteer my atoms into the dust,
Submit my consciousness to other times
And try pieces of them all.
It's not right that we can remember just one.
I could enroll my own history in this school,
Brush off the unpracticed lessons
Under lamps that wait tangled in corners.
In the end I bought a narrow cabinet, mostly green,
Pretending to be ancient and feigning purpose.
It leans away from my window, ashamed.