Coming late, as always,
I try to remember what I almost heard.
The light avoids my eye.
I act—I have agency—
but nothing much happens—milk is poured—
a bowl fills—
there are Cheerios involved—maybe a line
from a dream
I’ll spend the whole day chasing in the city
of my thinking—
that drift ambient vapor of anonymity
where fame of body
is forgotten (I see turtles sunning)
and tidal walking carries me on—I wade
in the slosh—
I mumble atop the autonomic—
good lines often—
whole poems swallowed—it’s so hard
to write them down—
by the reservoir
of their birthing—it’s like my brain
has a second life—
and deep caves
with bats in them—
impressions
of darkness and flight—the gray
screen at the edge
of a field fully blasted when the ideas
kick in—
O I would love to remember those cinemas—
but they’re buried deep
inside the twilights—waking/sleeping—
strips of film
that evaporate
in the hand—nothing visible left—
my body soon same strip of film—
neck so torqued
and hooded by dementia
talking to me
will be like talking
to a cobra—what will I hiss then?—
something
from a dream?—that mist
of being I am—
all the tactile pinch points screaming
we’re alive!—
we can see a heron across the water and it’s alive!
Dennis Hinrichsen’s 11th full-length book, Dominion + Selected Poems, appeared from Green Linden Press in October 2024. His previous books have been awarded the Akron, Field, Tampa, Michael Waters, Grid and Wishing Jewel Poetry Prizes. He has new work forthcoming in Midwest Review, Third Coast, and Under a Warm Green Linden. He lives in Lansing, Michigan where from 2017-2019 he served as the first Poet Lansing of the Greater Lansing Area.