I Didn't See It

for Adam And I didn't see that now you were here on the page writing poems too: poems silken with blue, fortified with a metaphor passing through. But I knew this speaker was you and knew there was so much about you that could reach around the metaphor to a personal etymology, one that could brighten and darken the poem without too many over-determined moves. But if you, speaker, need figures—more than language— who bless the poem's grief with vantage points or an altitude high up, or bandages soaked in vinegar, sure, then let the speaker invent a mirage, I understand that, too. It's tough these days when anxiety speaks through the fission of thought; it's the piss-pot of the mind. What anchors the fisted pronoun "we" in your poem? Something must. And another thing, upon second read, only now do I see how the "you" and "I" of someone else's poem landed in yours: on that particular cited greenery. And these other pronouns know—ahead of time- to check the soles of their shoes and how to manage a homonym's feet; moreover, they told you, speaker, how to open and shut the door without too much invention or conviction, which in a poem is rare.