For Nothing Tender About It
–Carl Phillips

If as shame is to memory, so too desire,
then is this desire, this cloak of shadows,
that I wrap close around me, that I
refuse to take off?

But the lake looks endless.
And my boat’s increasingly but a slowish swimmer,
across the waves – I’ve known
hurt, I mean; and I have been afraid. Sometimes

the difference between forgetting
to bring along artillery and showing up
on purpose to the war unarmed

is just that: a difference. Sometimes a lost tune,
unreckoned on, unearned, resurfaces anyway. Just because.

Am I not the animal by belief alone I myself make possible?

Photo by Mourad Saadi on Unsplash