Not that I lied, or wasn't myself –

I don't know myself enough to tell –

but tried to do things with words,
alter events – like the hero

at the plane crash

who drags the pilot from the agitated fuel,
only to later confess

he wasn't even there,

or was – was there,
a lonely bystander in the field.

So too, I've put on poetry airs,

commander's wings.
I'd regret this more, send you a letter

to apologize, but no longer trust

what I might say in writing –
might end up singing the praises of

how everything which forms a meaning

does so as, like water in a flood, it finds its flow
in the force of its own going to meet the unknown

downstream.  I'm not the conductor of stars,

can't make the sun desist from pestering
those who want more downtime in darkness;

I've watched the day end, outside,

glowing at the edges as the world goes
into a different mode, and cried,

for the way the air looked, or felt; but also

drawn comfort as smoke rises
from lawns where burning leaves,

as in a poem by Binyon or Burnside,

gather the visible surge that provides.