Sort of Coping

Why is anyone in the world so terrible. Real catastrophe
and catastrophizing. If we only knew when it was going to
      happen.

I saw you put your hands on the floor. Intimacy without
      disturbances.
The scope here of memorization, planets. The history of children

sitting still. You are so cute in all your facebook photos.
When you moved to Portland I forgot we used to call you

Tumbleweed Tex. All those barking dogs, feathered hair.
We have something in common I never mention. I wish

I’d written it down and folded it into one of your piles
saying I want to read every one of these books! Do you think

you’ll have read them all before the end of time. Did you go in
to see her when she was dead. Maybe you already knew.
 

Copyright © 2015 by Farrah Field. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 5, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.