Listmaking


 

Listmaking

I’m making an
incomplete list of
The Intoxicating and
Mysterious Luminosity of
What Is.

Maybe I’ll start with
The Spotted Cat Club,
Frenchmen Street,
New Orleans.
I think I’ll end with
Jailhouse Rock, Elvis,
before white leather and sequins.

Somewhere, in between,
weddings and wedding nights,
births and deaths,
big white dogs and
calico cats,
the Salish Sea,
the astonishment of bodies.

Someone singing at the foot of
the Eiffel Tower
at midnight on the Seine.

(Go ahead, make your own list.)

Now I will divide the list,
religiously,
like God, it is said, will divide
the sheep from the goats,
the sacred from the profane,
the saved from the lost.

Or, maybe,
I’ll see what happens
if I don’t.