Macedonia Road

               for Jess


I like music because I like sound
that makes me feel, said the Peloton instructor,
a former make-up artist, attentive to detail,
who knows not of me but pushed me hard
and never let me fall.

After,
as I crossed the grass, demented
from keeping time with my butt
I wondered, is it ok to just say to Jess
how much I love her energy?

What you drink / gets into your mouth / becomes saliva
You're alive
and all living drama takes place within a few vertical miles, totally scannable by the naked eye
except for tree frogs, which one rarely sees.

I took a long walk out country roads: down Reed where I’ve walked with Jess before,
turned onto Beale where the woods are thicker, had a little scare when a truck rolled by, unhurried.

It's a little confusing, isn't it, Jess (we can now acknowledge)?
To be a woman in her mid-thirties with a pretty cute ass
walking on the road alone at sundown
out of earshot — panic,
shame at the panic.

Some driveways have
a security system decal
screwed to a tree, one called CIA (the display is by subscription — you can just pay for the sign).

So happy birthday.

Anyway I turned around, walked back, turned onto Macedonia Road.

Suddenly bits of chat flew out of the quiet (first cocktails after months of isolation).
Don't go, said everyone ever.

It was like arriving at a party.

I made out a small man in hot pink shirt and shorts yelling
Shut up
with real ire at a pair of geese.

Birds were singing on every tree.
Tanagers, mostly, lined up on the boughs as the sunset
yellowed them the MORE.
All nature seemed inclined for
the dimming wall before a rest, and

I thought of the 1972 bestseller,
The Secret Life of Plants, a work of dubious science beloved by poets,
where the flowers and tomatoes took lie detector tests,
admitted they were really sylphs
hoping to move out West.


From Wings in Time (Song Cave, 2021). Copyright © 2021 by Callie Garnett. Reprinted with the permission of the author and publisher.