--I’M OVER HERE WORKING HARD ON TOMORROW

Please Don’t Look.  Please Look.

I am behind the gold love seat

flipping through Playboy,

a little dizzy,

meeting Miss December 1969

for the first time.

I am behind the stove

sucking on the piping orange coils

as Mother makes another meal

of skinny dead chicken and skinnier rabbit.

I am behind the long library shelf,

the one in the back no one

bothers with because that’s where

the poets smoke and sip whiskey on pages.

I am behind in Math and Science

but I don’t care, there are bigger worries,

really frightening ones actually.

I am behind a boulder

half a mile from home,

in a hardscrabble field

using a fingernail to scrape a truth

in the moss and ancient lichen

so that someone someday

might find it and come looking.

I am behind my brothers

in height, confidence,

savvy, everything.

I am running behind our two

milk cows who were smart

enough to escape and

will never be caught again.

I am tucked behind the doe-brown

eyes of Ms. Cooney,

my third grade teacher,

who looks at me from her desk

as if I am a car-struck deer,

steaming on the side of the road.

I am hiding behind

bloated evergreen limbs

watching my brother do

what is called sex,

thinking pain,

thinking should I intervene

or shout Stop or

or or or.

I am on a Greyhound

seated behind a woman

with hair smelling of lilacs,

its scent washing my face

clean every time she laughs or

kisses her seatmate in a crush.

I am behind the times,

behind the moon,

behind the farthest line of ocean.

And now, here I am behind you,

spooning as you dream,

holding tight and warm,

feeling blessed or just lucky,

a winner for once
          either way.