by Steve Mueske

After an Eight-Inch


snowfall in april  

A bird suddenly flies into & out of my garage.
Only moments later, I can’t recall
more than a blur

of turning at the back wall, a dip &
swerve, frantic burst of acceleration out

into a world erased into brilliance.
This is how it starts, isn’t it? With a sudden
flutter, slur

between image
& word, the startling about-

face of forgetting
why you’ve walked into a room, why
after all these years you’ve suddenly zagged

not into the vaulted emptiness
of a cave, but a cage, with no passage back

through rooms worn beautiful by age—& how
is it you've come so stupidly
to mid-life—Hello!—

with nothing more available
than a retreat

to first principles?
There was something indescribable in its judder,
its split-second swerve, the little engine

from the sky becoming unsayable
among the shelves.

How would I ever explain how my heart
had left my body at that moment, escaping
like a child’s fist?
 

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Steve Mueske is an electronic musician and the author of a chapbook and two books of poetry. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Crazyhorse, Water~Stone Review, Hotel Amerika, The Massachusetts Review, Typo Magazine, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. A retrospective album of 29 songs, So Far, will be released by Pink Dolphin Records in March.