Sometimes in One's Twenties
        San Francisco, 1970s

Coasting out into the open
night: no requirements, no plan,

you're limber and vivid as darkness, and
your shoes, patterned with tan,

aren't scraping your skin,
you're ready, no attention,

no adjustments, are needed: it's end-to-end
lightweight. Not hard to imagine,

though not something you'd mention:
the Background Music of everything, unbroken,

is almost audible. It's fervent
and velvet, the wind, and there's more than

enough of everything for everyone. Even
love might be about to pause in its motion

with a simple turn in your direction.
Of course, nothing has to happen

tonight; you're young, the nights extend
into every distance with no end ...

But at a six-streeted corner all of a sudden
an invisible bird tweets; call it a wren,

purple-checked, newly arrived from the Garden
District of the moon; and

there's this fit of mind to body as the body bends
to the world, surely something also bends

this way in the commotion,
is about to encircle ... portends ...

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Copyright © 2017 Diane Furtney All rights reserved
from The Blue Man
FutureCycle Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission