Crumpled Gutter

Odd details of the cosmos

Aren’t cries for your attention,

But attention snags on them,

Anyway. In rejecting

Infinity, June Jordan

Wrote and returned to the phrase,

Your brown arm before it moves,

Her poem’s synecdoche for

All things . . . dear that disappear.

You may love the whole person,

The whole body floating them,

But details catch attention.

The thin tray of the gutter

Hanging from the post office

Excites no admiration,

No love or lust, to be sure,

But one strangely crumpled end

Of it compels attention.

If this were seen in a game,

You’d admire the attention

The artwork showed to details

That made the simulated

Setting feel realistic,

Since reality includes

These oddities of detail.

What did crumple the gutter?

An encounter with a truck?

A bit of vandalism?

It doesn’t matter.

To a certain lonely cast

Of thought with no one about,

No handsome synecdoches

For whole humans sharing beds,

A bit of twisted metal

On a sunny winter day’s

Visit to the post office,

Can serve, in its oddity,

Random disconformity,

As one among all things dear.