To Marie

That I wasted the last year of my writing life

on trees and the like, thinking myself wise, 

and with the authority to explain

what our vision does to trees as we move past them.

A worse offense, I privileged the novel,

and was blind moving through it, mistaking

attentiveness for entertainment. I forgot

all of what I learned, everything I didn’t write 

and most of what I did. When I walk 

outside I see lines of people reading 

the early pages of some text. I hold myself

above them, as though I thrust such muscular,

intentional thought on each instance

of daily life, as though I’m not hurrying home,

the way there clinging to the self I believe

can be believed, and who must look so serious 

taking those wide, assured steps across the craters 

where water gathers (it is beginning to rain),

so eager to meet the hopeful eyes of strangers 

with a limp ambivalence approaching disdain.