Taking my leisure

Larry Moffitt
April 9, 2011

I can drive a truck between the moon
and the pleasure of loving you.
But even that is not enough to say.
There are aren't enough cocktail napkins
on the planet to hold the scribbled words
that connect what binds me to
our shared eternity.

The shaft of sunlight, filled with dust,
delivers the afternoon to me on a silver plate.
I can put my arms around you,
but I cannot be you or do what you do.
I can only marvel, as a fly on the wall
beside your bed.
Somewhere in the other room
as my second son was being born
the radio played Uncle John's Band.
"he's come to take his children home."

I take my leisure now, settle back
me inside you, and you in me.
Your hand on the back of my head
makes the air grow silent and far away.
Let the world blather on
like an over caffeinated talk show host,
going faster and faster, higher and higher
as the things on the ground
get smaller and smaller.
Nothing means squat without
unselfish love.

One day I will say I'm dead now,
thank you all for coming.
I will have seen by then
that when the black man and the white woman
dance unselfconsciously
while in the room old people sway,
their knees touching under the table,
that the good hats have carried the day
and the bad hats will, at best,
have only covered greasy hair.