my apology, my goodbye, my love

allentown, allentown, you pretty girl, i'm sorry i called you a devil town, you were so beautiful today, you just melt my heart. the east side is so beautiful, the neuweiler factory is so beautiful, the sunlight just filtered through your leaves just so and it glanced just so and you're so gorgeous, so pretty girl c'mere and give us a kiss.

allentown, did you see the moon tonight? i know it's hard for you to see the stars, but the moon was so large and fiery and it reminded me of the apple harvest that is going to happen, you should smell the orchards sometime, darling, they smell like a sweet heavenly syrup in the day's heat and a sweet heavenly perfume under the evening's cooling clouds. you know i'm going to leave you soon, so how 'bout one for old time's sake, pretty girl, just one more night drive, just one more light afternoon. c'mon, it'll do some good.

i've been on the wrong side of paranoid this week and you just got to me, you know? you took me back down from crazy and you saved me and i like that about you. dc is a senator's wife whose skeletons just keep getting ripped out of her closet instead of her evening gowns, but you, you're real, girl.

allentown, i'm going to give you a couple poems on geese that i found hidden behind my armoire, they're just for you because i love you as much as i despise those filthy birds. and that's a fact, darling, that's a fact.

I THOUGHT I HATED GEESE
1.
The geese honk and sqwak
"speed up"
"slow down"
"wait for me"
they're practicing flight patterns
for the annual migration
falling into
their sky encompassing arrows
pointed to the south.

I wonder
if we fall into such patterns each year.
Summers of liberation
cut short with the turning leaves
and all of us
gathered together and funneled
into hallways and classrooms,
calling to each other,
"what lunch are you in?"
"where's your locker?"
"I haven't seen you in so long!"
We practice the motions and prepare
for an entire year of such movements.
Shuttled from one end of the building
to another,
waiting for the day
when we alight gracefully
on the calm creek of summer,
our honking and hollering
quieted by the heat.

2.
I nearly drove my car off the bridge again today
my eyes got caught on the geese and the dam.
the goose who stood atop
let the water swirl around his webbed feet
and black leather ankles,
cutting the smooth stream into two long ribbons
which fell over the moulded cement
into clamoring white.

As if to impress me again
the gander dipped his neck
and pressed his black beak tot he water,
cutting another white thread in the flow,
and drank.