WITHOUT THINKING

You are as smart as the cherries that change
Back to pale when they’re about to be picked.
And fall from their tree weeks later, darker
And untouched. You know how to spell
Rain, misspell it torrent, flood, disaster.
You know words as long as your fingers.
The towel usually wrapped around your head
To soak the sweat from all this work is
Hissing on the radiator. You’ve trained
The dog to train the cat to train the mice,
Who really do need training, who are ready
At all moments to chew through the legs of
The King’s Chair. You want to train them
To bring the crown to you. When you were two,
You threw your dish out the window with enough
Spin it became the moon for the day, then
Flew back to you. If you were dead today,
You would not be as dead as most. What
Is the cost of being alive? Something multiplied,
Something divided, something subtracted, nothing
Added. Each time you think to yourself you
Lose a minute of immortality, a thing the rest
Of us think is not important enough to die for.
Which you think: yes. And you keep thinking.
First you thought love, love. Now, once again,
You think love. This is not difficult for
You to imagine, it is leaves on and leaves off
Trees, it is simply looking out the windows,
Windows all around only open always.




~Edward Kleinschmidt
from Poetry magazine, March 1986