Reasons Nobody Ever Called a Good Book of Poems a Page-Turner

Your first dog is ever your one dog And no story has a happy ending anymore. We have all wasted lives, sometimes we waste Our own. Some nights are long ones, some Never end at all. I don’t know how we canfall in love, which implies landing, Whereas love promises everything but. That’s why I like to listen to birds call At dusk to each other from the acacias But then I recall it’s still daylight and I Hear them in the absence of the trees. When I am traveling by train over mountains All I think of is the sea. My father was Never quite so alive until he died and now He’s immortal. Somebody must do the calculus, Somebody must work out the logic of the logic Of this spectacle because spectacle’s the last Word anyone would use for dreams that don’t cease, For the sound of weeping coming from the next room, Only there’s no next room and we’re the only ones There, though just for a moment and a lifetime more. Listen, I will tell you a secret, the secret you told Me once on the train into the mountains On the journey to the shore, a time long ago when We spoke and never met. That secret, which is ours. Some nights are so long the old dog comes home To us who remain there waiting and waiting Even if we’ve never been here before, where we are.