Static

Because my image
of it is flickering,
wavering like a bad connection,

I can tell I’m not
the only one dreaming
of the park tonight.

There must be two
brains, at least,
plugged into this portal, sharing this channel,

this wavelength,
judging by the way
the edges slant off into soft, static fuzz,

as if the whole picture
were under attack,
by swarms of grey midges, or viewed through a lens

of murky lake water,
and even the stuff
in the centre, on which I train my attention –

the little cinnamon bun, running after a ball
like quicksilver,
the lake reflecting clouds in the water

that have gathered in sheltered
pockets tucked close to
the shore – these too warp and bend, as if

I were viewing a movie
shot with equipment
salvaged from somewhere in the east

after some war or
collapse, or filmed
by a perpetually distracted and, to judge

by the general colouration
of what I can see,
terminally disenchanted cinema-

tographer. Still, If I
focus, I can just
barely make out the shack where they hire

pedalos by the hour,
hastily sketched
like a hermit’s hut in a Japanese painting,

and as the scroll
unfurls, if I turn my head,
that part of me that moves freely

through time detaches
itself from the part
of me that is pinned to the present, fetches

the noose he tied
that night, and sets off
walking, casually, through another park

on his way somewhere
even more distant:
the kitchen of my childhood perhaps,

where my father
offers grass
to a friend who has stayed

and stares out the window
as if he is trying
to imagine the home in which

I now live. Or is he
going even further
back, to see himself before I existed

when he was a child,
not yet rendered mortal
by the loss that one day

would be? Try
as I might. I can’t say
for sure. I only know that he goes

and I stay, and that
the distance between
his going and my staying is the distance

between two adjacent
piano keys, two
consecutive letters of the alphabet,

the distance between
a word and its
translation into a now defunct language,

the distance that wants
nothing more than to stand
in the way of my loving this world, this world

that, though it wants nothing
more than to fling back
against me the sad siege engines of my

incessant attempts
at love,
I love.
I love you.
Don’t go.