Search Party

Nights when the house pools with talk and laughter
jumps and flashes like a school of salmon kissed by sun, I turn away

the quiet guest standing nervously at the front door
and slip with nods through the crowded rooms, unsure
of how many will die on the way up the dam. I can count on half

an hour or so before they discover a tray of melted ice cubes in the kitchen
and my empty glass winking beside it like a single scale lost on the counter.

I search for something appropriate to call to the shadows
and follow the streets aimlessly, joint to joint, her name escaping me.

The knotted stomach of downtown rumbles with the night freights
packed full of fruits and fish rolling toward a store whose shoppers sleep.
Without checking the time, I drop my watch into a gutter

as evidence of a struggle. I try not to think of them pouring from the house
after me, since I cannot go back unable to explain where I’ve been.

The dawn will wake, hours too early, one eye at a time
in the windows of the streets where the search party calls out, knocking

her subtle name from my head. I walk to the fingertips of town,
to the widely spaced barns, the cornstalks sheered off and sharp with November,
scraping along the shins of wanderers like handless wrists.

I’ve come after her to explain myself: the cure cannot be more loneliness.
But I stop short amidst the stalks that can’t hold on, where, suddenly, she is again.