poem for the maybes


The universe is deterministic all right,
just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be,
but the only thing going wrong is people
fancying people who aren't supposed to be
in that part of the plan.
--chloe, from arcadia by tom stoppard


this is a poem for the maybes. not the yeses,
whose morning breath you taste on the hundredth day of hundreds,
but the ones you married or loved or betrayed in some other universe,
the first (you remember him as older than you are now
but when you knew him neither of you could reach the
top shelf in the kitchen, where fragile things like vases and hearts are
     kept)
and the half-an-hour-ago (a boy with a grin; a full moon)--

somewhere there's a picture of you, standing near the sort of tree
that could grow anywhere. coincidental neighbors for a week,
how strange to know the night noises and drunken stumbles and
uneven smiles and his one-syllable first name, country of citizenship,

well, goodbye.

somewhere there's a girl in a room with a flowered dress in her closet;
last time she wore it a rumbly stereo broadcast long slow notes and you
took her lonely hand, moved it over her head to spin her
and her hem in imperfect ellipses. you were barefoot;
she is taller than you.

there are jealousy plays, kiss-me-i'm-lonelys, a boy with things to say
and no one to understand them, you with no one to understand. you have
fumbled for fascinating answers to smalltalk questions from a girl you only
     want
in order to drive the girl you love as mad as she's driven you.

and you will, and you will,
smudge the line between maybe and yes--it's something about knowing.
maybes are not afraid of the dark. maybes do not have favorite colors.
maybes have freckles, tequila breath, guilt, a pair of shoes
that, when you see them again on someone else, will make you pause.
     "don't"
in the air they exhale, or "in four decades, when we are old
and have forgotten one another and met again"

maybes are the ones you speak to as though nothing has happened.
maybes are the ones you'll never see again.
you know you've tasted him, but can't imagine the metaphor you
might've thought of to describe it. spent a night with her watching stars,
and all you can remember is how you told the story later.


(february 2005)