for & from James Galvin
People were nice. I asked the priest
to wear my mother’s wedding dress during the sermon
about the difference between turning the other cheek
and looking the other way. The cowboy
wore it gelding bulls. The surgeon got it bloody
but the patient lived. The skydiver
jumped into the open arms of the air. Now a dress
worn once has been everywhere.
It’s easy to think I know what people will do
or say or wear, what the sun will look like
on Crete or who will love baseball
or who will want us to go to Mars,
just by looking at them. I asked the woman
who gets shot out of a cannon to wear the dress
while getting shot into a cannon,
took a picture to suggest a little bit
that angels are real. The snow
was the last person to wear the dress
before I sent it back to my mother
so she could smell all these lives
touching her life coming to an end. The snow
looked good in it. Good enough to carry
over the threshold, to melt quickly
in the slower melting of my arms.
The thing that lasts is noticing
everything that doesn’t.
Why we don’t get married every day
to the woman or man
or galloping shadow of a horse we love
is beyond me, much like a can
of tomato soup on the highest shelf,
only higher.