Meeting My Future Old Man

You mistook these blue veins 
for blackberry vines, this white hair for your childhood 
   cat in a tree.

Here, I found a nickel in the sun.

Today I am a mask 
hung on the garden wall. I may decide to speak 
if the sunlight splits the hillside, if there’s a scent of cedar, 
   a shard of the day’s last heat.

Mostly I know the comfort of gravity 
held in a stone, sometimes a wide, blue silence—a swell 
   rising in a sea somewhere past memory.

You see, I have no more stories, and I have not 
   grown wise.

I am the yellow Chevy flying 
   off the end of the dock, still poised in the air—

from here there is only sky, blue green 
water, ten thousand whitecaps brilliant in the sun
   trying to break free.