Something Will Come (Zuihitsu) - John Repp

Aren’t we all most sensual when unaware? Catch one of us chatting or unconsciously picking at the pimple on one cheek, eyes black & dewy at this distance & oh! the stillness of true listening!

*

Impromptu, stumbling, hilarious volleyball with both nephews 
& a sister on ground I once walked bereft with the beloved dog
& the beloved young agony & in those woods over there I hid
from my wailing mother when the pines & swamp maples 
weren’t so much as saplings & to hide you had to slow
your breath to nothing inside the rusted oil drum & pull
your sweatshirt over your head till your father came (it must
have been him with that there-there rumble he’d use only on her)
to guide her back up the trail home so there was only cold grit
& pine needles & the astringent breeze when you crawled out.

*

The dream in which I both was & watched a blocky, crewcut, square-legged, cartoonish man scurrying away from a milling bunch of people who’d befriended him in order to complete a rococo sexual arrangement in a house with fat windowsills & deep window seats & sloppy blotches of paint on the plywood floor.

*

A week ago, 
all-but-delirium 
on the bus to Murcia—now, 
something else.

*

“Am I the only one who remembers mechanical drawing?”

*

She really did say
I want to fuck you silly
but context is crucial.

*

A flock of wild turkeys paced along the creek like a column of monks in walking meditation then all but the tom fell at once to poking for whatever in the snow is good to eat.

*

The desire to be tended to & to escape the tending & be seen escaping it, to be experienced by others as withdrawing into a silent place but to have those others always there.

*

Something will come 
for the dead mouse
by the hibachi, some 
scavenger heretofore 
unimagined.

*

Maria in a tux jacket leaning cross-armed in the office doorway. Teeming plaza in hot midnight. Comprehensive morning ablutions after a ten-mile run. Oh, to toggle among worlds.

*

Connor’s thumbprint on the beam 
between living & dining room,
Russ holding him overhead 
just long enough.