the prisoner base

we are growing boys,
and we are fallen men
falling fast at speeds that feel like floating
with your feet in your throat,
like choking
a plummet or a coast
on blizzard beaches colder
than anything
you've known
oh frozen sir, before collapsing,
show me
what you've seen and
what you know

I know a cold that's not worth knowing
I see nothing much becoming
a table long ago in the window of the Cafe
Meridian, I half-read Saramago and half-
listen to the waitress loudly on the phone,
insurance renewed in stolen moments,
checking off to-do's, she serves
me steel-cut oats and a plate of potatoes,
she is good, this I know, she says
she likes them the way I do,
peppered and onioned, she has an eager
face, don't forget where you came from,
though, through
this memory traced from our tempest
of a seaboard, where I lie lapsing
in the snow