'my vocabulary did this to me'

yes, jack spicer's dying words; thinking today, fondly, of how much trouble my intellect (or interest in intellectual pursuits) has given rise to in my life.

anyhow, an old poem, marking the beginning of my fascination with jack spicer.

WHEN MY MOTHER SAYS, ANGELA, EVEN GOD GIVES US SECOND CHANCES

...all lost objects stay upon the moon
untouched by any other eye but God’s.

Jack Spicer, Imaginary Elegies I-IV

I cannot say why I invited you in, weeks after you’d left: just
that the moon was full, Mars bursting in the west, your hands
in the stalks of my hair I as stepped
from the car; even Diana’s moonflowers
were blooming.

That night, my entire shin was bandaged, the skin there burned
away playing softball, trying to outrun your throw flaring out of
right field, sliding into second on bare legs. You could not see
it pulsing red beneath the gauze pads, beneath my jeans,
your hand resting there a moment
while we smoked on the roof.

A full month later it is healed, a marble scar. Some nights,
I mistake it for the moon
look for you in the driveway.

But I wake in the morning and I do not see you, even
days when you are still sleeping next to me; it is
too early and too bright and I close my eyes,
think about how one
can never look directly at the sun, but can stare at the moon
for hours. How I do not really see anything until it is dark,
find your shirt in the bedclothes,
a handful of pennies on the roof.