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Adam Houle
How I Imagine the Seasons on a Walk with My Dog
I pretend my footfalls leave perfect
imprints in concrete, evidence of my quiet
passing, evidence further that a deceptively
heavy man hides in my bones, takes weight
from this August's water-filled air. Each step
an earthly failure, minor and without recourse.
The tiny cracks merge with larger until a whole
section heaves like an ice floe's sluggish traverse
of a shore. I'd drift like this for years,
surfing the sidewalk on a concrete block
in this town, in any town, so long as fat
pantries wait off halls in a hundred kitchens
and at whatever table I sit, a window
is cracked, and the curtains breathe
the copper rain as I read up on dandelion wine
for the nervousness in me, for that last sum
of summer nights as they lose what makes
them fresh. The wild lilacs in the yard fail.
Target-shaped cankers appear, and next year
great knots of growth will keep the dead
far enough away from what we have left of the living.
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