I want to be excused, at least this once,
from being me, and be instead someone
who sees daily things as miracles,
and falls into a dream of being a great green river
rolling over dams, under the bridges of cities,
neither believing nor disbelieving,
not searching or keeping, always
yet never the same thing, flowing.
I want a moment of silence for the girl
I secretly loved in high school,
whose suicide note was just
a dog-eared J. Crew summer catalog.
She wrote poems with a leaky Bic pen,
skipped school to read books
in the fruit-filled woods along the river.
I want as my final image, please —
her tapering fingers, blackened by ink,
plucking those wild persimmons.