(Poetry) Regular Thing

It’s like a regular thing
when I tell myself that I have a short attention span —
But a bridge can’t have a short attention span;
Otherwise it would be a ramp,
or just a place for people to stand around.

Maybe it’s just having a sense of the overall vision,
an almost-glimpse-from-the-corner-of-my-eye
disappearing-around-the-corner-shadow-in-fast-motion
just-beyond-the-reach-of-my-sideview-mirror-hiding-inside-a-chrome-glare
or-sun-spot-or-blink-of-my-eye-like-an-image-three-channels-back
scrambled-inside-a-sidewalk-crowd’s-mesh-of-faces
or-a-watch-dropped-into-the-river
and trying to see what time it is
— from the bridge.

Not impossible, but imposing.
The only line I can remember
from any French poet:
“The sun is drowned
in its clotted blood.”
And that’s because I have it written down,
ink bleeding on the page
from my chewed-up pen.
But if I wrote everything down,
when would I find the time
to throw it away?

All the envelopes, brochures, bills in the mail, daily newspapers with endless sections,
shows and songs and stories on TV, radio, satellite, microwave, novels, web sites,
essays, weekly magazines, monthly magazines, annual collected anthologies, tall
paper sacks filled with groceries, those plastic two-handled bags always about to burst,
stacks of shirts, computer megabytes, shoes, CDs and light bulbs and
a box of shiny black trash bags like the ones on the sidewalk I step over
walking down the street
toward the bridge.

I know,
this is like giving someone a picture of myself in a wheelchair,
even though I don’t need a wheelchair —
not right now.
And the picture is in full color.
Even if that sun I see
when I cross the river
at dawn or the end of the day
is bleeding its way across the sky,
minutes and seconds drip-dripping in its wake —
Despite my occasional — okay, frequent hibernations,
time spent standing still on one side looking over at the other side,
it’s like a regular thing,
telling myself I have a short attention span.
After all, what could be worse
when you’re trying to rhyme a verse
and you can’t remember the wordz
that you started off with?

But —
Sometimes, I can.