Friend

The poems often start
with an anchor to time:
dusk, midnight,
eclipse twilight,
predawn. 

It’s never two fifteen PM,
you may note. 
Never suppertime,
never late morning
coffee break. 

Why do you suppose so many
of these poems begin
at liminal moments?

Asking for a friend.

Why do you suppose
there was never a full length manuscript
from this poet? Why do you think
they never got there? 

Asking for a friend,
a friend afraid to admit
that they want that answer.

Afraid to say that answers, 
whether given freely 
or puzzled through,

are often the graves 
of minute reasons to remain alive.
In those times when the quest
is more invigorating than the arrival,
accepting answers
feels like moving closer to death. 

Asking for
a friend, as always,
one seeking
to understand

thick, stagnant truths
like the one about how
no one wants to touch
this old body of mine,
not even me. The one
that pushes out
another question:
why is that? 

Asking for a friend, one
tired and purely
disappointed friend.

How is it that one can be
so terrified of uncertainty freezing solid
one trivial answer
at a time?

Asking, you know, as always, for a friend.
Asking for one curiously ignorant friend.

Asking for a friend,
one like a shadow
who won’t step out
and be seen as solid —

say at two fifteen PM
or late morning coffee break — 

one who prefers the blur
of in between moments.

A friend who ghosts away
into the surrounding dark
once they’ve heard the answer.