Longing

So, in this swirl of carbon, you feel things

like your eyes dusted by hibiscus thistle

or ear errors corrected by a finer tuning of strings.

So isn’t it miraculous such a dish serves itself

while you just sweep the hose through backlit air

defining air with dust as you go, hopping gardens,

cooking, eating, singing, inching toward exquisite this

and that, in this carbon swirl that meets

you face to face as a caricature of yourself,

weird and honest with no part missing

but unfulfilled longing for it or her or that

my god, the rails I’m on that take me daily

down these cyclone walls, the fields

below me my boredom, the winds, bedframes,

streetlights, where broken towns are my distracted thoughts

as I drop into yet another frozen room. They say it sounds

like a freight train, longing, exploding from wood.

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LAWRENCE BRIDGES is a poet who has published poetry in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review; he is the author of three poetry volumes from Red Hen Press.

This poem appeared in The Festival Review, Volume 9 & 10.