Boketto

Outside my window it’s never the same—

some mornings jasmine slaps the house, some mornings sorrow.

There is a word I overheard today, meaning lost

not on a career path or across a floating bridge:

Boketto—to stare out windows without purpose.

Don’t laugh; it’s been too long since we leaned

into the morning: bird friendly coffee and blueberry toast. Awhile

since I declared myself a prophet of lost cats—blind lover

of animal fur and feral appetites. Someone should tag

a word for the calm of a long marriage. Knowledge

the heat will hold, and our lights remain on— a second

sight that drives the particulars of a life: sea glass and salt,

cherry blossoms and persistent weeds. What assembles in the middle

distance beyond the mail truck; have I overlooked oceans,

ignored crows? I try to exist in the somehow, the might still be—

gaze upward to constellations of in-between.

Susan Rich