Concern

110 Concern Paul Guest Through the window the rain like a movie, better than the one I pretend to watch, soldiers in snow I know is flakes of soap or powdered potatoes or talcum milled fine. Fakery falls, slow and slow, toward this place I like to call here, I like to call February even though it’s August. No one I know pretends likewise. One more reason to feel a slight sadness, one more reason to send you an email that lies about the beauty of Bavaria. About snow’s massive serenity— the way it accrues like silent debt, the way I pretend to keep track of each flake like a concerned parent. Which I’m not, but a vial of heartsickness I’m closer to being. Each day I’m asked what I’d like to eat and never do I know. It’s an algebra I’ve no gift for, no gift at all. I love the clouds for the courage I assign them as they empty, as they eddy in endless jags overhead. Maybe it’s a way to make peace with my own foolishness currently jetting through Europe. It never writes but I receive its bills. It hates the cold and so do I. 111 Paul Guest Why I bother with February, the real one in which I ache like everyone else, I’ll never know. In the emptied-out dawn when the birds begin to enunciate their insane haiku, know that I’m awake, watching the sun turn to snow. ...