Alan Gould

An Understudy for Desire

Our lazulite planet’s not so young,
   dozes through its quakes,
the self, likewise absorbs the small
   seismic shifts age makes.

Theme-change in dreams comes stertorous
   upon the sleeper’s breath.
I’m over fifty and I have
   no conscious fear of death,

though dreamland terrors yield to dreams
   of mislaid gear and mess,
I search the filth in pockets for
   that lost address.

My wallet’s there, it has the proof
   of who I say I am.
The patient airline girl insists,
   I need ID, my lamb.

I tell her, Fuck you, Gorgeous, it’s
   my choice to hire a car
and drive to where the thunderheads
   and milky systems are.

So why’s she here behind the wheel?
   Is it that I’ve been blind
since I left the options of
   my boyhood far behind?

O tell me airline darling with
   your feet up on the dash,
will you consent to live with me
   intact with your panache?

For days, for years, we cruise where freeways
   flash like industrial glass,
then find the talc roads inland where
   hills kneel in lion grass,

pull over, tumble down through green
   and turbid aquatint,
finger where all the methyl eye-
   dark boysenberries glint,

then lie remote as ancestors
   with all our lifetimes given,
the things we wished for locked in space,
   like starstuff under heaven.

Also by Alan Gould in this issue