That empty matchbook winter was a new trudge
through short-light afternoons with time to kill.
I said, can you teach me even one skill that will
catch me when I fall? The scowl didn’t budge
off you, but with the we are near-brothers nudge
you got a whole roll of quarters and I got a refill.
Pool table like flying over a forest. And I’m still
no good for a bank shot. Even now, I might smudge
the cue ball blue, unsteady. Exclamations drawn
across the felt. Forget angles, you said. Pretend
you are casting a spell over a level bed of moss.
Then the home idea wasn’t a house with lawn
to be owned, anymore. To go home was to lend
ourselves to each other. Your win was never my loss.
