Sierras

Mar 13, 2008 - 00:34 AM PST

Sierras

I want just that—
snow
in the Sierras
and videos in which we inflate
each other with wisps of air from
puckered mouths.

Fred and Yumi bask
in the December sun on video,
stretched out like snow leopards
on the hood of a black
Cadillac no good
for winter, says he.

Adventures,
the time of their so young new lives.
Already old they know that wrinkled
they’ll want those snippets
of snowballs and truckstops,
power outages and cases
of cheap booze.

Somehow they got free and not me—
I am still here,
trapped and cowering
in a couch cushion fort of books
and old ideas, quivering
at the flurries.