Just the Ones

From deep in a hole of tequila,
our friend Fred announced

he’d like to mail himself to us
in an oversized box.

In the movie version,
Cary Grant, scanned in Trenton,

sliding off the package conveyor belt,
immaculate still after days of transport,

might have said:
Look away, darling. My bar code is showing.

No matter how they are stamped and handled,
these are fragile times.

Margins of error are one thing
and also another.

Which is to say
I may like everything about you

but you.
But I am still convinced.

That as it worsens,
the weather is getting better.

That there is news. And we are just
the ones to give it to.

Copyright © 2010 Dan Kaplan All rights reserved
from The National Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission