difference

It pleases me like that broken bone --
an impossible ache producing laughter
when I fell from a wild, youthful tree
and gasped, smiling at how strange --

yes...it pleases me to imagine a teenage girl,
who lives in an old mansion in Connecticutt,
who walks stiffly and uniquely amid gleams
from the oiled surfaces of heavy furniture.

She lives her way through a chronic illness,
something congenital, merciless, usurping
that makes her frail and drained to white,
her pale strings of veins greenish, apparent.

She has never tumbled in moist summer grass,
squealing and sweating on a merry-go-round.
Inside, she must move with a cautious grace
through the quiet halls of her strangeness...
and mold long time into an ostensible world,
one that has little to do with how we dream.

God!...it pleases me like a death wish
to imagine how odd she must be there!
All the things and tears that people do
crack and shatter before her difference.



Copyright 2011 -- Tim Buck