Ruel S. De Vera

Date Due

For Carlos

Annointing it
with a murmured wish,
you held it tightly
in your warm hands
this book brimming
with case-fresh poems,
this covert offering
untouched by the trauma
of diluted stamps,
before passing it on
to hands you knew
years ago.

Maybe a page
within your book knew
I would never meet you.
Your letters deplaned
from La Puente, a name
that in Spanish meant
“The Bridge,” literally
lost heirloom claimed
by one pair of hands
after another. I came close,
wheeling north of you,
six hours, six minutes away,
seven silent years later.
Now, in my path lie fallen
the remains of leaves
shaped like stars, attacked
by swooping shadows,
the only evidence
of whatever wings
above unseen among
the mercenary missing
while cars tell themselves
out loud where to go.
I witness red lights
approaching street
by street, and I realize
once we’ve had
enough of ourselves,
we travel alone.

I try again another
year, getting even closer,
37 minutes away now.
The I-90 is endless,
hopelessly backed up
all the way to Culver City.
The streets feel like
they’re burning, packed
with failed parking meters,
sacrificial tin men in a row.
The cars have all
converted; the shadows
hide behind sunglasses,
faces frozen crossing
streets chatting
to themselves; everyone
struggling to stay awake
in the daylight,
everything waiting
to be discovered.

Pulled back in my private
direction, held by tongues.
I never made it,
returning somewhere
you left lifetimes ago
but dreamt constantly
into verse and verb.
Here, the coldest
of night winds scalds
even if televised wise men
prophesy February
growing colder as poems
prowl the hot train tracks.
Too many acquaintances
derailed in the dark time
and fallow light, I know
it’s here, now, something
I never ever saw coming.
No sender to return to,
the book lies warm in my hands,
as if it just got out of the sun
after days of being on the road.

But I keep moving,
still trying to outrace it,
its unnatural histories,
this species of origin,
but even as we hope
that all we fear arrives
never rather than later,
the worst knowledge owns
merciless momentum,
my own words coming
home, making a noise
like someone shuffling
after me, whispering:

Don’t forget to write.