For Nothing Tender About It

If as shame is to memory, so too desire,

then is this desire, this cloak of shadows,

that I wrap close around me, that I

refuse to take off?

But the lake looks endless.

And my boat’s increasingly but a slowish swimmer,

across the waves – I’ve known

hurt, I mean; and I have been afraid. Sometimes

the difference between forgetting

to bring along artillery and showing up

on purpose to the war unarmed

is just that: a difference. Sometimes a lost tune,

unreckoned on, unearned, resurfaces anyway. Just because.

Am I not the animal by belief alone I myself make possible?