Apricots

Bombolino dreamed of apricots the night before he wed,
and wondered briefly what it meant,
such visitations in our sleep,
portent of a certain kind of sweet.
clue to look back upon all his life
as once warned or promised.
He’s fine with taking chances,
shaving with a plastic razor careful not to cut his face,
the day unfurling in his head as if icing on a cake
could rise in animation, flit and fly about,
as people’s voices turned to birdsong,
brittle chirpping and French cooing
everyone happy to hope for the best.
Bombolino smiled as he walked some memories into jail.
(They knew what they did.)
And wondered how one woman would promise
to be everything forever, goddess claim,
as if the disappointment that haunts everybody
had finally been eliminated by vaccine.
“We head into the impossible, I guess,”
he thought, glad that he still could.
Fearless and stupid is the way to start a family.
Live out the novel, book to be co-authored
by a woman better than he at the life
Bombolino wanted to fill his old man self.
We end up with the skin of paper bags,
and he wants it jammed with the cacophony
and chaos of kids, days carefully constructed
only to be blown apart again and again.
Stepping from one universe
into another, the door a strawberry blonde
with crooked lips and eyes animal alert.
Every breath needs a reason, yet
even the properties of air may change.
Later, his jerk cousin from back East
repeats a line from his football days,
“You’re mortal, man.” Bombolino, certain
as the Earth, replies, “Not today I”m not,”
grinning like a man who can’t be killed,
like a man who once walked straight the path of love,
like a man who'll one day plant an apricot tree
to declare a part of our frontier his.

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