#8- Arthur

Years, Buried

I was never that aware of root vegetables,
unexpected sweetness of a beet
melted into a dish of yams—
the only hint it was there
the red-purple tint of the dish,
the surprising fuchsia, sugary taste.
I was never aware things could
taste red or that buried things still
matter, but people are of the Earth.
Unburying stores in us is wholesome
& nourishing, too. Time uproots
what we shied from showing.

I am finally holding this up,
looking at what I carried
so long under my coat, considering it
never: years later, in Salem
as I’m walking the historical tour
painted a pasty red-purple
on a sidewalk. Some city worker
has lifted sections of the line up
with manhole covers, put it
back crooked & in pieces
with little crosses & tangents along

the way—it reminds me of a time
when I readjusted all my covers,
attempted to walk my line more
straightly—lost contact with tangents,
which were present only as stories
over wine at a soiree: travels.
Places seen or found or felt.
But what matters? A rose garden
in Utrecht? Or what was said there,
or a philosophy hand-written in a letter
& sent overseas to me explaining
what would make people like us perfect lovers ,
or the time I saw the shy girl
obscuring her face but laughing at a camera.

Being what I am, a digger,
I wonder over every askew
line I might’ve followed
into an alley just once—
with that one girl I thought was
opaque even as she let me see
her dreams

over hours of talking, then I changed
my diet
but I couldn’t change the pang
of some feeling I knew was
but didn’t know where
because that deep, red
place in my heart wasn’t marked
on the map or in the garden patch.