Anchoring

by Aaron Barrell

To begin.  To be weak of will in matters of the body.  To be always distracted.  To swab one's cheek.  To not look back.  To decide.  To pursue a certain possibility in the mind and then to return to the point of decision.  To give.  To crack a red pecan.  To hear its shell, same as any shell.  To decide not to crack it.  To let the enemy eat before the lover eats.  To watch him eat.  To form the word "from" in the mind.  To imagine later eating the nut alone.  To give up.  To love unrequitedly.  To be told one is frowning.  To look in the mirror.  To get one's mail-order DNA test back.  To be told what is coming.  To go on.  To have many similar beginnings.  To first invent the love poem and then find in it love.  To go on and on.

To the eye and mind a stick and a stickworm are the same until one moves.  To be sure what the matter is.  To feel it in two places at once.  To be sure what the matter is.  To not ever have done so.  To have done so, but not with gusto.  To be the long-awaited vessel.  To never have gotten as far as one wanted.  To listen more carefully next time.  To be the hand, poised.  To be drawn to certain words.  To be drawn by that hand.  To know where one began but not where one is.  To be in evidence.  To be a terrible accompaniment.  To be the first light to fade.  To believe every word of "Love Hurts."  To ask where the body is in all this.  To frame the matter.  To hear the word "from" from beyond the
point.