"The Trick Is It Gets Easier:", Samuel Caleb Wee
The catch is keeping on.
Every eternal recurrence.
Each unworthy thought.
The heights, the pits and plateaus.
Some mornings cold, like settled
cigarette ash in coffee. Every day
in British Columbia the North
Pacific Current promises warmth.
If I make it to Wednesdays at night
I get to hear my friends love each
other. I am inordinately afraid of a great
many things: fortuities, the tempting
weight of stories, and accidentally
I have become the lightest man I know.
The North Pacific Current breaks
on Vancouver Island proper, but
I live near naked people, and the foam
on the shore, praying, “And one more.
Just once more.” Once upon an equator
I trusted a church where too much
of kindness was tangled up with eyes. (He’s
all talk & no touch, all wanting to be seen.)
Inordinately I fear my friends falling
out of love. Inordinately I distrust
the heights, knowing I always crash
in due time, like lightning down the stairs,
or down an escalator in a crowded
downtown mall. But the hours yet,
and the hands ticking, cupped hands
cradling my saltwater. The hours
take me on, past soft girls falling
for filmic boys, blondes mirroring
each other, dogs journaling their barks
at the sun. And mine. My evasions.
My unearned lyric voice. Raggedly
I apologise to winter in a portrait
of my breath as a higher law.
Upon a misted window I write
the ideogram of my strangest name.
I mean to marry this moment before
spring evaporates. I mean to say:
“But look: I am still here. Just
once more, I am still here. ”