What Happened After it Happend

My mother helped me write the first poem: Weary people
she began: the cigarette smoke drawing sadness in the air
Then I wrote walk the streets
because if people were going to happen
they had to move or they couldn’t be in the poem.

Then my mother left & in the room they came
like an army of tomorrows—people forces of nature
& pure invention barreling barreling barreling
living down the door

Then I wrote like shadows not quite real
where are they going I wonder?
down to the harbor to see the lonely ships

considering life as seen & unseen the way the sea
imagines a harbor as the shadow harbor