Quidnunc (What Now)

Just to hear it say yes, maybe instead of no,
occasionally I ask my town something
obvious, something that simply is—
like... is that bulldozer idling beside a pile
of smoking pasquinades and a large hole
on a downtown demolition site,
is that cardinal singing like Robert Johnson atop
a section of busted up chain-link fence on the corner,
is that guy (that would be me) in a parking lot
trying to balance liquor boxes
and open his car door—bless his heart—
about to end his longueur in this southern town.

It would be easier if these old, vinyl-façaded buildings
stopped telling us about ourselves, these old one-way
streets stopped going where they think we need to go.
Then the rat at the dumpster—so hard
to poison because he only sniffs
at the bait, remembering what made him sick—
could pack his bags and bear witness somewhere else,
the butchered trees along Elm Street —
that dropped their leaves over the old-timers
in the churchyard—could let this town forget
the shady place it used to be, the circle of
its conspirators barely making an arc anymore.

Already bats by the hundreds pour from
an abandoned cotton mill into the tale
of the dusky sky, and Hamburger Square’s
streetlights stain the happy-hour crowd like verdigris
on ancient statuary, and the moon
seems notched with the witness marks of favorite sons
who never leave, yet claim to search
every highway for buddhas to kill.

How lovely to begin again with you
now that we’ve started—
so in love have we been with the moment
between going and not going—
how much time we have wasted trying
to rid ourselves of now.