—from Family Photographs
In a few months, doctors, ECT, the iron gates of a sanitarium. But for now, your half-smile says, relief -- to be eleven And unconcerned for once with friends, their bikes, the Cubs, who punched who. How good it must’ve been to become for even these few minutes A cruel monster or a ghoul by yourself, to turn enchanted From the murmur of neighbors gathered With their highballs and hair on the deck behind you Toward this ominous cloud burned sepia, orange; In this fleeting midday twilight to feel yourself disappear inside yourself — To cast no shadow. And then – our last visit so long ago, Michael, how had you put it? -- the delicious insistent thought, What if it stays like this? To yearn and yet not to know yet What that yearning meant.