A bench and a sunset

I don't go, though I should pretend

to walk among the numb and past and dead to see my friend

afternoon at the park

filled with the wind's far swell in its long sound

the place I leave is not one to be kept


I look at her tired gaze

at she who because she is cannot change

(that one thing)

dawning on the spot

not on the bookshelves of brown and paste and ore

we live in cages we ourselves forge