Fragment 49

We step and do not step into the same rivers;
we are and are not
-Heraclitus

What I took to be a man weeping in a
blue suit turned out to be the president
ogling a teenage contestant

just when I thought I’d taken the
last nail I got your voicemail &
felt its rope of distance

tugging me back to you    where I’d stay
forever if given a choice, like yellow roses
I’d flow evenly over your skin

but walking west what I thought was a
crime in the making turned out to be the
symphony warming up on 57th Street

I recognize the need to climb down
from the cross & stop thinking of all the losses
& remember that you’re the best cutman, baby

with you in my corner I’m the perfume
of warm summer rain & when the blood gets
redder you get busier with Vaseline, Q tips, and ice

but what I thought was a calendar of the years of
my marriage turned out to be a boat filled with bilge
listing starboard on the wrong side of the Sound 

what I thought was a good Belgian
beer turned out to be a suitcase of old
porn on the porch 

what looked like a shelf of cologne
turned out to be a sweater of spiders
what I thought to be the right hand

of God was only Eddie Haskell grilling
hot dogs in my backyard, his narrow
feet jammed into broken sandals

as for what was once thought to be the
will of God, well that turned out to be
a tag for twenty percent on the next pedicure.

Gary Percesepe

Gary Percesepe is the author of eight books, including The Winter of J, a poetry collection forthcoming from Poetry Box in May 2020. He resides in White Plains, New York, and teaches philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx.