*

You never know what
staring from this scale
as if my weak arches could adjust
its lens --I'm on TV

on some dirt hill
that's only eight years old
trying to climb back
be the breeze and boy king.

When there's no toys
you make a throne, waving belly-laughs
and wreckage :my bathroom scale
a rampage till just as suddenly
it stopped counting --you crouch

on the six o'clock news
--who knows whose slipping arm
will be again around some afternoon
trying to climb back
or if the disembodied voice
isn't from your schoolhouse desk

--Miss Dempsey, it's too windy between
these numerals, these ankles clanking
the way mountains all evening
lift the Earth into darkness

and redemption. You never know
what and you weigh yourself
after each dream.

You wait for me. Asleep
your arm around your other arm
so they won't break off, are warm
despite the altitude and speed

dreams need --you never know
--that dirt hill sometimes and sometimes
not, climbing on my lap
as if it remembered and I
could still laugh from my belly
from under these broken arches.

-- Simon Perchik