Notes in the Case for One Progression
Back then, the solution was simple as a grapefruit spoon
for the Italian ice grown too solid from sitting far back
in the freezer where I’d dislodge & carry it to the screened
porch, into the hot evening air, which, aided by my warm hand
wrapped around the paper cup & perhaps even the mourning
dove’s low call began to loosen the sweet hard snow, coming off
at first in thin scrolled sheets then little icebergs I’d take whole
in my mouth before a brain freeze the serrated edges against
my tongue seemed to relieve. Nothing rampant yet rose or fell
in the body, but a deep code begged noiselessly to be solved
so it could become unsolvable. I could never unlock the front
door of the house no matter how many times I was shown
all you had to do was jiggle the key & push down so I walked
around, across the bluestone patio laid one summer by a family
friend’s shirtless son, my eyes on his torso from an upstairs
window, on the dark pools of his eyes when he came inside
for a glass of water. I never saw how he split the slabs, but
he emerged through the gate with pieces wide as his tan chest,
some no wider than a spread palm under the crabapple’s pink
canopy where moss held every crack until the sun passed slant
with desirous reach, wildly unfixed. The nameless, irreversible
center kept from each of us. An altogether different task
to lock the door: making certain the correct metal button
was already indented, you had to slam it as hard as you could—
to anyone still inside, it sounded like you left with such large purpose
it contained the possibility you wouldn’t return, though you always did.